To Be By Your Side
by Alidiabin
Summary: "Well you know, I'll travel for good hummus". AU from end of S10. Set summer 2013. Tony and Ziva go to Israel together. She shows him her past, and they discuss the present and the future. T/Z. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

Years before, they once had a conversation about inevitability. He believed. She didn't. The team was in peril then too. They were being split up, and being flung to distant corners of the world, by a new director they did not think they could trust. That night they drunk, despite the fact that both of them have early flights. The night after they handed their badges into the same director, whom they now trusted without fail, Timothy 'two drinks and out' McGee got drunk. Tony and Ziva shoot each other concerned looks, while they sipped on their matching soda waters.

Months before, he told her she wasn't alone. She had hugged him tight. The she had slept with her friend, because she felt alone. He doesn't blame her for that. That night after they drop McTipsy home to the new McGirlfriend, the ever so lovely Delilah, she tells him that she does not want to be alone. This time he knows what to do. So, that night after they handed in their badges, they lay on Ziva's queen size bed and stare up at the ceiling. He tells her then, that it's them versus the rest of the world.

The Christmas before, he told his Dad that he likes to sleep over at women's places because then he can make a swift exit. They sleep together the morning after they handed their badges in. They spend the day in her bed, becoming acquainted with each other in the biblical sense. Only getting up when they really have to. The next morning, Ziva returns from her run, and asks why he is still there. He tells her there is no place he would rather be, and he means every word. She cups his face in her hands, and admits she is glad that he stayed. Then, they test his theory that her shower is big enough for two.

Once upon a time, and it really feels like a lifetime ago, they played married assassins. Married assassins, who had a lot of very convincing fake sex. Over the years, they've used the names Sophie and Jean Paul Rainer, as an inside joke, or quick alias when a bad guy is on their heals. Over the course, of three days, Tony and Ziva explore every inch of the others body. He has imagined them sleeping together, a fair bit over the years, but this is better than he could have ever conjured up.

They've talked about ghosts a few times. Ziva sort of believes, in mystical creatures, and evil spirits. For him ghosts are completely fictional. But, when they have their first blow out fight, he feels the ghosts of Jeanne Benoit, Ray Cruz and Michael Rivkin in the room. The carcasses of their parents failed relationships, add fuel to the fire of their abandonment issues. In the end he storms out. Her door bounces with the force. Ten seconds later she's running after him. Like, it is in all the old movies, it rains as they stand on the street holding tight to one another. They decided then and there they need to make this work.

He will claim it was rule twelve that kept them apart. He suspects that if Gibbs ever heard him say that, he head slap him into the next century. They talk about rules, a lot in the long difficult days after their big blowout fight. On the tenth day since they crossed the line from friends, to something more, they sit and they make a list of ground rules for their relationship. They borrow quite a few from Gibbs, especially the one about being unreachable, but they nix the one about apologies. They sit in front of each other, and promise to try their hardest to make it work.

Once, not long after her father died, he tried to convince her to go camping. She had laughed at his suggestion, for one thing it was not yet March, and they both knew she hated the cold. Another thing was he dislike of nature. Still, after nearly two weeks spent almost exclusively in her apartment, (Tony's fish now lived next to her Shabbat candles on the bookshelf Gibbs built her), Ziva wanted a change of scenery. He reluctantly agreed to go camping. The weekend they chose, was the weekend where the entire tri-state area, had unseasonal heavy rain forecasted, with flash flooding in some areas. Despite mother nature not coming to the party, they build a fort in Ziva's lounge, using dining chairs and sheets. Under the fort they told each other secrets, and share silly stories. She reveals that she always wanted to go to college, but thinks the time has past. He tells her just how long his latest dry spell was. She reveals the most embarrassing song on her iPod, which turns out is like the Israeli equivalent of Britney Spears, which makes him howl with laughter. They debate making love inside the fort but his back protests. Instead the crawl out, and head to her bedroom, giggling away.

The fort gets taken down, but they do not stop sharing secrets. One night, she tells him stories from that summer they never talk about. For years now, he had been filling in the blanks when she starts gagging at the smell of cigarettes, or when he notices a fading scar. What she tells him, is worse than he could ever imagine. He wants to kill Salim Ulman all over again. He wants to go back in time, and drag her onto that plane in Tel Aviv, so she never even ended up on the same continent as Salim and his men. He holds her tight as she tries not to sob. He tells her she is safe. That night, she has a nightmare, and he is right there when she stirs. He does not go back to sleep, until he is sure she is on the road to being okay.

On another secret telling night; Tony finally gives her honest answers to some of the questions she has asked over the years. Yes, he believes in soulmates, but in a Casablanca kind of way, with the soulmates ending up separated. For a while, he was really cut up about never having a wife or kids, but he still holds out a tiny bit of hope that he might have a family one day, even if he is pushing a zimmer frame, while the kids learn to walk. And yes, most of the time he was staring at her ass, because damn she can rock a pair of jeans. She assures him, that she will remember that power of her posterior, when she wants him to do something.

She doesn't tell him that every night, she dreams about Israel. She dreams about her grandmother's cholent recipe which she has never been able to properly replicate. She dreams of Ari chasing her through the olive groves. She dreams of her father placing her on his shoulders as they watched the Purim parade through Tel Aviv. She dreams of Tali's shrieks as they ran into the blue waters at Haifa. She dreams of her chubby Aunt Nettie who always fed her sweet Jaffa oranges, and told her never to fall in love, because men are dogs. She dreams of Schmeil's huge library, of her and Tali dragging the books home in their wagon like Matilda. She dreams of her favourite bar, the American themed one, the one that got blown up while she was undercover in Cairo, with Jenny. She dreams of her mother's reading voice, reading the Chronicles of Narnia while the scud missiles from Iraq rained down. She dreams of her one eyed Uncle and the horses he called his ladies. She dreams of the friend she had in the Army who she kept alive by making him sing that stupid Hadag Nachash song they both liked, when concussion threatened to lead to a ceremony at the Mount of Olives. She dreams of Shmuel Rubenstein's pecked lips, as she knocked him the ground. She dreams of her Ari shouting at her that she would never bloody get it, as the slipped through a Gazan checkpoint waiving their blue cards, while Ari's childhood friends got interrogated by baby faced soldiers. She dreams of Tali's singing voice. She dreams of her father's glassy eyes, when Tali sung.

Every night, she wakes up, gasping for air, drowning in memories. Every night, it becomes clearer. She needed to go back to Israel. How was she going to explain it to Tony?

 **A/N** :

I have been writing this on and off for months now. And have re-written this section like ten times, and I'm still not very happy with it. The next chapters, will use just one tense, and be more standard, yes with dialogue. It will basically, be a re-write of PPF, in some part quite a radical rewrite, *cough cough* that Deena bs *cough cough*.

I never really do WIPs or many multi-chaps. So, be warned this may take a while to update. I will try my best. Be assured, I'm not holding chapters hostage for reviews. I just have a full time job, a drinking habit, and wandering muse.

Side note, I'm not Israeli or Jewish. Yes, I have researched the eff out of stuff I mention in here, and I also read a lot of books on the subject. (Since I quit watching NCIS, I also quit TV, now I read like a book a day). I will probably get something wrong, please let me know if I do.

Also, I don't own anything. Because if I did, a certain somebody wouldn't be dead.


	2. Chapter 2

"This is a classic," Tony declared, as they watched a fairly recent action movie, that Ziva had long forgotten the name of.

The dinner plates were still on her table. She had already decided to make excuses to load the dishwasher, once Tony got engrossed enough in the movie. She had made an Israeli dish again, for dinner, not that Tony had complained. The dish had not quashed her longing like she had hoped.

Tony's hand ran up her thigh. She had gone for an afternoon run, to clear her head. She had decided that all she really needed to wear, after her post-run shower, was Tony's OSU shirt, which made him smile.

"Do you wanna watch something else?" he asked, his fingers on the inside of her thigh, his trademark grin on his face. "Or perhaps something more interactive?"

"I need to talk to you," she whispered, biting her lip. She had tell him. Try and explain. He seemed to read that she was being serious, and her television was muted.

"What's going on?" he asked. "You've been."

"Distant," she interjected.

"Yeah, that," he agreed. So distant. Was she going to kick him out? Already sick of him, he thought.

"It is silly," Ziva whispered, shaking her head. "I do not even know how to explain it."

"Try me," he uttered.

David and DiNozzo rule number one; no secrets, no exceptions.

"I have not been sleeping well," she whispered. He knew. He heard the gasping and the sobbing been happening the last few nights.

"The dreams" he muttered. She had slipped out of bed for nearly an hour, the night before. He'd not been able to fall back to sleep, until she came back to bed. "They getting worse."

"They are not nightmares," she assured him, as she placed her hand in his.

"What are they?" he prompted.

"I do not know how to describe them," Ziva paused, as she looked him dead in the eyes. "Sometimes they are memories, but sometimes the memories get tangled. The wrong people say the wrong things."

Her father honestly tells her he loves her, not using it to buy her loyalty. Ari is the one standing in the bus that blows up Tali, with explosives strapped to his chest. She keeps swimming until she reaches the horizon at Haifa, while her mother begs and screams for her to come back, but she just keeps swimming.

"Memories about what?" he asked. "Africa."

She hated how he called that summer Africa, but that was a discussion for another day.

"Israel," Ziva admitted, "They are about Israel."

"Israel?" he cocked his head. He was trying to put two and two together, and was getting eighteen.

"I cannot explain it," Ziva continued.

"Please try," he begged softly.

"I have been dreaming about Israel for a while," she whispered, "And every time, I wake up, I feel this pull."

"A pull to what?" he asked.

"I feel this pull, no this compulsion," Ziva stopped. "I feel this need to go back to Israel."

"Like forever?" he asked, his face fall. They had been together for three and a half weeks, and she wanted to skip the country to be rid of him.

"No," she whispered, and she watched as he let go a breath. Relief flickered across his face. "Just for now. I need to go. Just for a while."

"Okay," he said, flashing his smile again. Was this really going to be this easy?

"Okay," she echoed weakly. He was just going to let her run off to Israel, with no firm plan in mind. He wasn't even asking for her to remember rule two.

David and DiNozzo rule number two; never be unreachable.

"We'll look at flights in the morning," he declared, as he reached for the remote. The movie had paused on an action scene, so he debated whether or not to rewind.

"We?" she asked. As in you and me?

"Yeah," he replied, as the remote was placed back on her tidy coffee table, conversation wasn't over yet. "You know I'll travel for good humus."

"Tony, you do not have to come with me," Ziva uttered. She did not know what she would be doing once, she got to Israel. Nor, if Tony would enjoy it. "Your life is here. I cannot just uproot your whole life, while I wander."

Ziva David, the wandering Jew. Ziva David little girl lost.

"Haven't really got much going on at the moment," he uttered with a shrug. "Besides, I'm always saying I want to travel."

This could not be this easy.

"I'm not going to sleep with Adam again, if that is what you are worrying about," tumbled from her mouth, after a few seconds of quiet.

She watched his shoulders heave with revulsion. Low blow. She was out of bounds. They'd made rules about this.

David and DiNozzo rule number eight; no low blows.

"I wasn't," he declared coldly. "I trust you."

David and DiNozzo rule number four; monogamy both physically and emotionally.

"I should not have said that," she replied.

"No, you shouldn't," he muttered coldly, turning the television on.

"I am sorry," she whispered.

David and DiNozzo rule number six; always apologize when you mean it.

"I know," he replied.

"Do you really wish to come with me?" she asked, after about thirty seconds. Tony stayed focused on the screen.

"Wouldn't have offered, if I didn't mean it," he declared trying to hide the leftover anger. "Do you not want me to come?"

"I do," she declared. "I just never thought you would offer."

And she never thought to ask him. He released the fist that had balled in anger.

"Why?" he asked, turning off the television again. Had he not been in her corner every single step of the way? "Wouldn't be the first time I've followed you across the world."

"People are not usually this nice to me," she admitted quietly, her eyes bulged with tears.

"I'm not most people," he assured her. His heart broke as the words echoed in his head. He wanted to hold her tight and to make it all better.

"It's just, I have been alone for so long." she finally whispered.

They both had. Too damn long. So goddam alone.

"You're not alone," he repeated their mantra, as he pulled her into his arms. "Remember what I said, when you asked why I stayed."

She had been so sure he would leave. Just like everybody else. She had spent her whole run, trying to prepare herself for an empty bed. Then, when she found him still in her bed, sleepily flicking through his phone, she had been unable to hide the surprise, even with all her long discarded training.

"That it is us versus the world," she whispered, remembering those early conversations, those assurances. "And that my bed was too comfortable for you to possibly leave."

"That I'll be by your side," he replied. "And your bed's really comfortable. I think that's why you got it, to trap unsuspecting men."

She laughed, and a stray tear fell down her cheek. He rubbed her cheek. She smiled, and he smiled back.

They were doing it; the sea was wavy, sometimes the currents were outside forces and sometimes they came from within, but they were riding them. They just had to keep holding on, and making sure they kept each other afloat.

"I do want you to come with me." she admitted. "I promise you, I will make it worth your wow."

"Worth my while," he replied with a chuckle. "The humus will make it worth my while. I just hope we find whatever you are looking for in Israel."

"So do I," she admitted, as she buried her head into his chest, their breathing synced up, he patted her curls, and they just sat there.

It was okay. It was all going to be okay.

That night she dreamed of Israel again, but this one was strictly a dream; her and Tony frolicking in the warm sea while the sun set. They were laughing and happy. This dream did not wake her up.

She returned from her run the following morning to find Tony sitting in front of the computer looking at airline tickets.

 **A/N:**

Don't get too excited about the regularity of these updates.

At work, I do something called expectation management. I'm managing your expectations.

Thanks for all the lovely reviews. They really made me smile. Thanks for the follows too.

I don't own, jack. If I did, somebody would have had storylines worthy of her character.


	3. Chapter 3

Tony felt the hot afternoon sun on his face, as his eyes opened one at a time. Why was it so hot, he wondered. He ran his hand over his face, and made an animal noise, as he awoke in a barren white room. He groaned again, cursing El Al's tiny seats, for his aching back. He reached for his charging phone, and found that it was nearly sixteen hundred, Israeli standard time. For a second, he tried to calculate the time in DC, but decided against it, knowing it would only aggravate the beast that was jetlag.

He sat up in the double bed, smoothing the white sheets over his lap. He could smell himself, he still smelt like airplane. There was noise coming from the other room; Ziva was puttering around and humming. He ran his hands over his face, and frowned. He had slept for so long, yet he was still so tired.

"Good afternoon, sleepy head," Ziva uttered, having appeared in the white-walled room, having ninjaed in, while he tried to wake up.

"Oh sweet honey from the gods," he declared as he took a sip of the coffee she had given him. He needed it, more than air.

He watched a smile creep over her face. Her beautiful face, which seemed to already be sunkissed. She wore no signs, of the two flights it had taken to get them from DC to Tel Aviv, because they were flying a day after booking the flights, they could not get a direct flight. Her eyes were still firmly in their sockets, despite how far she had rolled them, when he started reciting the Heathrow Airport speech from Love Actually, while they waited in the transit lounge.

"It's just coffee, Tony," she said as she took a sip from a matching mug, which smelt like it had some sort of fruit tea in.

He patted the bed next to him, and she came and sat down next to him. She leaned her head on his shoulder, her curls tickled his bare skin. She smelt like shea butter. He licked his lips.

"Good coffee," he whispered, as he took another sip.

He could taste the fresh milk. She must have been to the supermarket, since she leapt out of bed, long before midday, being the only one of them who stuck to the plan for a quick nap.

He scanned the plain bedroom again. She had revealed as they slipped into the anonymous eleventh floor apartment, in an anonymous Tel Aviv high-rise, that the apartment was in the family. She had actually said 'in the family way', he had corrected her, telling her that it was a euphemism for pregnancy. She had smiled, and revealed when he was on the cusp of sleep, that she had lived in the apartment when she was in Mossad. She had lived here.

Now, as the caffeine soaked into his brain, he tried to imagine her here. He tried to imagine her cleaning her guns, at the massive dining room table that was the only furniture in the main room. He tried to imagine her curled up on the big bed, like a cat, leafing through her big serious American classics. He tried to imagine her cooking some exotic dish, in the tiny achingly sterile kitchen.

It was so different to her cosy little condo, where she had couch with a mountain of throw pillows, and half a dozen blankets draped across it. Where her kitchen always smelt like roast vegetables, whatever month of the year. Where she had a huge bookcase filled to the brim of books on American history, and Hebrew new releases that Schmeil sent her.

This place lacked any personal touches; not even a photograph. It felt like a safe house. Safe house chic, he decided with a grin.

"Penny, for your thoughts?" he asked, as she ran her fingers up and down his bare chest. "Or should I say New Israeli Shekel for your thoughts?"

"How long have you been sitting on that?" she asked, as the hint of a smile lit up her eyes.

"You know that's not how my mind works," he declared.

If his mind did work like that, he would have had a lot of time to think, especially on the flight from Heathrow to Ben Gurion. The flight where he had been stuck in the middle seat, because some guy who looked like he walked out of 19th century Poland, could not possibly sit next to a woman for his flight, on religious grounds. He had expected Ziva to kick up a fuss, but instead she had rolled her eyes, and took the coveted window seat. Tony had been trapped between two snorers. The flight attendant had not so much as offered an apology, when he told her just how much El Al's movie selection sucked. Ziva had promised to explain to him, why Israeli's liked to walk around so much on airplanes, but she hadn't yet.

"Sometimes, I am not too sure if it works," Ziva joked.

"Hey," he cried. He placed his hand on his chest, and feigned hurt. "Your words have wounded me."

She smiled, and adjusted herself slightly. Curls spilled across his chest.

"Seriously," he said, voice softening with each syllable. "Whatcha thinking?"

"I had forgotten," Ziva whispered, as she looked up at him.

"Forgotten?" he prompted. "Forgotten what?"

 _I had forgotten who I could trust_ , she had once confessed in a orange walled men's room, what seemed like a lifetime ago.

"I forgot where the supermarket was," Ziva whispered.

"Okay," he uttered, dragging out the word. He was confused.

"I went in completely the wrong direction," she continued, frustration seeping from her. "I lived in this city for over twenty years, I grew up here, and I got lost like a tourist. I had to get my phone out to get directions."

"It happens," he reasoned. You're overthinking this, he thought.

"It is not just that," she muttered.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I forgot how busy the supermarket would be," she continued.

He gave himself a second to work out what day of the week it was. Friday, he determined after a little effort. He knew enough about Israel to know it was the weekend. Weren't all supermarkets, across the world, busy on the first day of the weekend.

"Looks like you survived," he muttered, knowing how impatient she got in queues.

"I forgot about all the security," Ziva whispered.

The kids with guns. The kids who looked like they hadn't finished puberty, with Uzi's slung across their shoulders, like guitars. It freaked him out, just a little. Okay, a lot.

"We're not in Kansas anymore," he declared.

"It feels like I have forgotten so much," she whispered. "Even though I was here six months ago, it feels like I have been away for longer."

"Well you weren't here for long, last time," he said. She had been in Israel for forty days, after her father died, back in January. Forty very long days. If Vance hadn't also been on leave, they probably would have put another Agent at her desk.

"So much has changed," she whispered.

"Places change," he uttered, as he placed her hand in hers. "People too."

She had changed. She had come to them; so closed off, and so empty. Slowly, like an onion she had peeled away the skin; layer by layer, to reveal her sweet but broken heart. Bit by bit, they'd all helped; Abby's hugs, McGee's willingness to help with almost anything, Gibbs' silent support, Ducky's soothing cups of tea, and Tony's endless movie references. Sometimes, like when her father died, she tried to pull the layers of the onion back over her, like a blanket, but the skin on the onion had gone soft.

"It is not just that," Ziva uttered.

"What is it then?" he asked.

"It's just the woman at immigration," Ziva paused. He watched as she curved her lips, almost said something, but then her words retreated.

"She was off her rocker," he declared. "Absolutely, crazy."

Israeli immigration, would not be the highlight on the trip. The had been asked a lot of questions. The mid-forties heavy-set woman at the desk; had even asked Tony if he was going to marry Ziva. Ziva had tried to end the conversation there, switching to Hebrew. Tony, had plastered on a grin and assured the woman with a bare ring finger, that he'd marry Ziva one day, if she would have him of course. That seemed to satisfy the older woman, who had stamped their passports and sent them on their way.

Still, despite their troubles at immigration. They had fared much better than the hijab clad woman with the two young children at the desk next to theirs. She had been questioned by two different people, then hauled off to the side. Her little children, trailing behind with wide eyes, and confused looks.

"She was," Ziva said swallowing thickly.

"What'd she say?" he asked.

"It is silly," she protested, and squirmed in the bed.

"It's affecting you," he replied, "it's not silly."

"She said welcome home," Ziva blurted.

Israel; home for all the Jews. To come to Israel, to make an Aliyah literally meant to ascend. The place where the Jewish policeman was to arrest the Jewish prostitute. The place, where her grandparents, who hailed from four different lands were finally free from religious prosecution. The country she had picked up arms for, without a second thought, without question. She had been so proud then.

"Okay," he whispered. He was confused. "Are you home?"

Tali's laughter as they rushed into the water at Haifa. Ari chasing her through the olive groves. Her mother singing the classic pop songs as they got stuck in another Tel Aviv traffic jam.

"No," she said firmly. "Not anymore."

Tali sitting next to a suicide bomber. People shaking her hand, at her father's funeral, saying what a great man he was. How desperately she wanted tell them some home truths. The police knocking the door of her childhood home, there to bring the news that her mother would not be coming home.

He let out a deep breath. Relieved, she had not said yes. His fear, that this odyssey would end with him leaving her on a tarmac. He'd seen Casablanca, he didn't want that ending for them.

"Where is your home?" he asked. Her cosy little condo, came to mind. He loved that place.

"I don't know," she said carefully. Her mouth remained open for a couple of seconds and she moved her mouth trying to speak, but no words came.

Ziva David little girl lost. Ziva David looking for home.

"Not D.C?" he asked. Not with him.

"Sometimes Washington feels like home. I was so excited to show Schmeil all of my favourite places," she declared. He remembered driving them three of them around Washington D.C, the day after their boozy dinner, and before Schmeil's evening flight. Schmeil had been shown all of the main tourist sights and then some of the more personal ones; Ziva's favourite deli, the bookstore that sold the translated books, and her favourite park blanketed in thick early December snow. "But sometimes, it does not feel quite right. It feels like I am trying to fit a round peg into a square hole."

"Square peg," he corrected. "Square peg into a round hole."

"Where is yours, Tony?" she asked.

He thought of his apartment. The single bed, which he and Ziva had clumsily made love on a couple of weeks ago, when they decided that Kate the fish should be relocated to Ziva's apartment, as they spent most of their time there. The rows, and rows of DVDs, organised a thousand different ways, during those many lonely nights when sleep was an elusive mistress.

"Home is," he paused, and found himself struggling for words. "Home is."

With her, he thought. Home was feeling her creep out of bed for her run, then presenting her with tea when she came back. Home was educating her on cinematic classics, while she compared the movie to the book, because almost all of the classics had once been books. Home was the two cooking together; him singing Frank Sinatra too her while he chopped vegetables.

"You don't know," she acused. Maybe, he was as lost as she.

Peter Pan, and the lost boys. The Little Prince, so excited to have a friend.

"Maybe home isn't a place," he utttered.

"What is it then?" she asked. Her face screwed up in confusion.

"I dunno," he shrugged. "A feeling. I guess you know when your home."

And you know when you are not, she thought.

"When did you get so wise?" she asked. He's wasn't really sure himself.

"Well, we are in the holy land," he said, with another shrug, and a grin.

A smile crossed her face, and a little laugh echoed from her. The tide was turning on this conversation.

"And to think, I haven't even taken you to Jerusalem yet," she muttered, as they both started laughing.

She cupped his face in her hands, and placed a kiss on his lips.

 **A/N** :

It's becoming apparent, that I should really rename this "The Confessions of Ziva David" as it's going to be heavy in the conversation, and not much action going on. If that's not what you signed up for, thanks for hanging around, all the best.

I'm aiming for weekly updates. Operative word there, is aiming.

Most importantly, thank you, for all the lovely reviews, favourites, and follows.

I don't own anything, if I did, two very deserving characters would have gotten a happy ending.

Like I said in my previous note, I'm not Israeli, and I live in a country with a very small Jewish population. So, here are some of the books I've read over the years, that have informed some of the more culturally specific stuff in here.

 _The War on the Women of Israel_ by Elana Maryles Sztokman (religious men not wanting to sit next to women on airplanes).

 _The Property_ by Rutu Modan. (Israel plane behaviour). P.S If you want a graphic novel that will make you sob like a baby in your public library this is it.

 _All Russians Love Birch Trees_ by Olja Grjasnowa (Israeli plane behaviour).

 _The Lie_ by Hesh Kestin (Israeli immigration). Would not recommend this book.

 _The Unlikely Settler_ by Lipika Pellham (Israeli immigration).

 _Sharon and My Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries_ by Suad Amiry (Israeli immigration).

 _The People on the Street_ by Linda Grant (Israeli security).

 _Not the Israel my Parents Promised Me_ by Harvey Pekar

 _My Promised Land_ by Ari Shavit

 _How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less_ by Sarah Gilden

I may have got my interpretations wrong here. Some of these books were read a long time ago. Some are fictional. Even non-fiction books are biased by the writers lives, and political views. And things are always different to an outsider looking in. So please correct me.

Yes, I do read other kinds of books. I just finished The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, and Run, Don't Walk by Adele Levene.


	4. Chapter 4

"You know I could get used to this," he declared as he took a sip of coffee and admired his breakfast; eggs, salad and some bread. He didn't even miss the bacon that he would usually have with such a meal.

The cafe they were sitting in was busy, so they sat outside, to enjoy the sun. They weren't too far from one of the touristy areas, he knew this because he had seen no less than five tour buses drive past, with wide-eyed and grey-haired tourists peaking out of windows.

Ziva sat opposite him, her breakfast mostly eaten. She was flicking through a newspaper that had been left on the table. The paper which had a picture of the Israeli Prime Minister with a frown etched on his face.

She always looked so natural in cafes. He had thought that in Paris, where she had been sitting quietly writing little postcards, probably to Schmeil, while drinking overpriced coffee and nibbling like a bird at her croissant. It had been like something out of film. He had wished he had taken a photo of her then.

"You, could get used to what exactly?" she asked, looking back at him, the newspaper was placed on the table. She smoothed the pages down with her hands.

Her curls, peeking out from the new straw sunhat she had brought the day before. They had spent the Saturday, exploring the city, she had shown him places and told him stories. He had smiled, as he caught glimpses of her past. She had brought him a sunhat too, but that had been left behind in the safe house chic apartment in a pre-caffine haze. He could already feel the sun bearing down on him, if the day ahead involved as much walking as the previous day, he was going to end up looking like a tomato. McGee, would love that.

"This," he declared, with a wide smile.

The people of Tel Aviv, went about their days. It was Sunday, the start of the business week she'd told him. A group of soldiers walked past, and Tony tried not to zero in on their guns. He made a mental note to ask Ziva, what the different coloured berets meant. The man at the table next to them, swiped virtual pages on his e-reader, while he blew out sweet smelling smoke from his e-cigarette.

"This," she echoed. She pinched her face in confusion.

The light breeze changed slightly, and he got a whiff of sea salt. She had promised to take him to the beach. Maybe, that was her plan for the day. Or maybe, she would show him more little glimpses of her old life.

"You know," he continued with his mouth full. "Cafe hoping, people watching, and eating salad for breakfast. Who knew that was a thing?"

She did the half laugh thing that he loved about her. Then her lips disappeared behind a white cup. Her eyes still shone with a smile. She held the cup in her hands.

"I am sure your doctor will approve of your adoption of the Mediterranean diet," she told him, as she returned the coffee cup to the saucer. "It is very healthy you know."

She returned to her newspaper. The cafe hummed. He put his knife and fork together, his healthy breakfast now eaten. He spied, her plate with its lonely tomato and cucumber slices. He picked his fork back up, and slowly inched toward the cucumber. He waited. Waited for her ninja senses to kick in. Waited for her hand to smack him away. Waited for the eruption, and then for her to laugh.

She said something in Hebrew, he was pretty sure it was swear word. Her whole body stiffened. She looked across the street. He watched her. He waited. His fork moved ever closer to the cucumber. The e-reader guy, blew out a puff of smoke like a dragon.

"We need to go," she declared, as he rushed up from her seat. He mirrored, her not quite as quickly, because his back still ached from all the flying.

"Never took you for a dine and dash kinda girl," he answered.

He knew she had paid when they purchased the food, but he thought a little levity might ease the situation.

"My friends," Adam Eschel called out, as he separated himself from the crowd, and walked toward them. He was wearing a jacket, that aimed to make the wearer looked instantly cool. It pained Tony, that it worked so damn well.

Ziva swore again in Hebrew. One of the words, that she only used when she was driving.

"We were just going," Ziva said, with the fake smile she had perfected after years in America, "Another time."

"But I just got here," Adam cried in a voice that made him sound like he was from a bad movie. "And I am so glad to see you."

The ereader man looked up from his virtual pages, frowned at the commotion, took two puffs on his e-cigarette, and then returned to his reading.

Ziva sat down, with a pout. Tony followed suit. Adam took the spare seat from the smoking reader's table, without asking, and sat down.

"What do you want, Adam?" Ziva hissed. Her arms crossed over her chest.

"I have always liked how straight to the point you are," Adam replied, with a smile.

"What do you want?" Tony repeated.

"Can't a guy catch up with one of his friends from his army days," Adam said with his arms held out. "Especially, when I get on so well with her boyfriend. Maybe, we should find that basketball court, yes?"

He squirmed in his seat at the word boyfriend. It made him feel twenty years younger and not in a good way.

"Another time, perhaps," Tony answered. How about never, he thought bitterly.

"It was our friendship, that has played a part in this," Ziva bit her lip as she debated how to finish the sentence, "this mess."

"I am aware that our friendship, was investigated," Adam replied. "My girlfriend was not impressed by it all. I am in the doghome with her at the moment."

"Doghouse," Tony corrected. Ziva and Adam ignored him.

Ziva frowned at the mention of Adam's girlfriend. She felt a seed of guilt try to plant itself in her stomach. She had not asked Adam about his girlfriend, when she had invited him to her bed. And, she had known that Adam had a girlfriend, even if she struggled to remember her name. That night, Ziva had only been concerned about burning off the emotions that swam in her head, and had craved the touch of another human. She swallowed thickly, and tried to drown the seed of guilt by reminding herself that Adam should have thought about his girlfriend, not her. Still, she could not help but think she had hurt someone else with her actions, and that was all she ever seemed to do.

"I have also heard a rumour, that Schmeil Pincus, used to work for the Mossad," Adam said, with a hearty laugh. "I think that is the funniest thing, I've ever heard."

"Gotta say I'd rather be finishing my breakfast with Schmeil the Man of Steel, than you," Tony uttered coldly.

"I know I cannot compete with Schmeil in any respect," Adam replied with a smile. Then after a long pause, his face fell into a frown. "Unfortunately, I also come with bad news. Your friend Agent McGee, sent me these."

Adam pulled out his pricey-looking smartphone, and opened the photo app. He handed Tony the phone, and Tony saw his apartment on the tiny screen. His huge windows, had bullet holes in them. His piano had a graze from a bullet. He looked for his fish Kate in the ruins of his apartment, but remembered they had left her with Mike Frank's' granddaughter. Little Amira had been delighted by the fish, and her mother had warned them that they might have trouble trying to regain custody of the fish.

Ziva gasped, as Tony handed the phone to her.

"Oh, Tony," Ziva whispered. "Your home."

The phone was placed on the table, and Adam slid it back into his pocket.

"Guess, my insurance premiums are going to skyrocket," he said with a grimace.

Between his shot up apartment, his totaled car, and his age coupled with his job, he might as well just send his whole paycheck to the insurance company.

"It's your home, Tony," Ziva whispered, her voice so much softer than it had been before. Her hand, had reached for his. She moved her eyes, trying to latch onto his.

Hadn't Gibbs, once said words of a similar vein to her. She'd ignored him and his words, and looked back at him with lost eyes. That had been, when they both thought things could not get any worse. That time they had both been wrong. Very, very wrong.

"Well, I've been meaning to redecorate," he said with a shrug, still avoiding her eyes. "Maybe, paint a nice orange colour."

The joke fell flat, probably because Adam had never seen the walls of NCIS, but Tony clung tighter to humour as his security blanket. He felt like he'd been suckerpunched. His apartment was hurting, and so was he.

"We think it would be for the best, if you two considered some protections," Adam said. "For your safety."

"We?" Ziva asked. Her face turned from Tony to Adam. Her expression, had turned from softness to confusion.

"Director Elbaz, and I," Adam said. Tony, could've sworn the younger man wince, as she said Orli's name. Adam must have been read in, on some of the David family drama, as well, Tony decided.

"Orli," Ziva scoffed. She rolled her eyes back violently.

The man at the table next to them, had left without either of them noticing.

"Yes," Adam said calmly. "Director Elbaz is concerned."

"She has no right to be," Ziva hissed.

"Ziva," Adam sighed. "We are your friends, we want what is best for you."

"Orli Elbaz is not my friend," Ziva shot back. "Why is she inserting herself into my life?"

Thirty year old Ziva, found herself thinking like thirteen year old Ziva, and wished Orli Elbaz would just disappear.

"Vance, is probably on her ass," Tony reasoned. He rubbed Ziva's fingers trying to soothe her. "It's just politics."

"Whatever her motives are," Adam continued. "She offered some accommodation."

So, they were trading the safe house chic apartment for an actual safe house. Hadn't a overly enthusiastic blonde Mossad officer once told him that the Mossad safe house was deep underground. A bunker. That was definitely, not how Tony imagined spending his summer.

"No," Ziva replied. "We will not hide."

"I understand you two are without your usual protections," Adam said delicately. "That you are on a sabbatical of sorts."

Tony scoffed, at Adam's description. He missed his badge. He hated how his pocket felt empty without it.

"That will not stop us from protecting ourselves if necessary," Ziva replied, "Have you forgotten, I was trained by the best?"

She could also disappear without a trace, if the going got tough. That scared Tony. The past couple of nights, he had found himself waking long before dawn, just to check she hadn't disappeared on him. Her snoring had eventually lulled him back to sleep.

"Tony, did not receive your father's training," Adam replied.

"I did not mean my father, when I said that, " Ziva interjected. "Tony is more than adequately trained."

Tony smiled, not just at the compliment, but as he realised who she meant. Gibbs. Gibbs,with his rules for every occasion. Their current situation probably had a couple of rules covering it in the high forties. The emergency rules, Abby had once told them with wide eyes.

"Are you not worried for Tony's safety?" Adam asked, feigning concern.

"I can look after myself," Tony shot back, trying not to sound pissed off.

"Let your friends look after you," Adam begged.

"We have each others back," she said, as she turned her head, and looked in the other direction. "Perhaps you should go back to work, Adam."

"Ziva," Adam said with a sigh.

"You heard the lady," Tony said, "Beat it."

"You remember in the Army, how we used to joke that your stubbornness would be the death of you," Adam said, with a sad smile, as he got up. "I worry, it really will be the case."

The two of them, barely eighteen standing in uniforms that still felt like dress up clothes. Their feet ached, with blisters forming under sweat soaked socks. Their backs still felt heavy, even though their packs had long been taken off. They could barely stand with the exhaustion, and yet they could not sleep. Adam lit a cigarette, he had never really smoked before, but he had always seen soldiers smoking, so figured it was the done thing. Ziva laughed as he coughed and spluttered. Then she showed him how, having learnt, after years of watching her parents. She did not smoke either, but the nicotine hit was very welcomed by her exhausted brain. Her throat burnt, as she inhaled but she did not cough. Other people, might have discussed music or movies, as they passed a cigarette between them, but Ziva and Adam discussed how the might die. Adam, would die trying to impress a girl Ziva had decided quickly. Adam had declared it would be Ziva's stubbornness as he stamped out the cigarette.

"I am fine," she uttered, in a tone that told both men she was quite the opposite. She turned her head away, her eyes distant

Adam returned his chair to empty table, and started to make his leave. Adam handed Tony, a card which had his cellphone number on it. The two men nodded. Tony slipped the card into his shirt pocket.

"If you get into trouble," Adam said, as he turned around to head onto the street.

"Adam," Tony called. Adam pivoted in a way that told Tony he would have been the loser of any basketball game between them, and turned to face Tony.

"Yes," Adam said.

"If you hear from McWorryWort, tell him we're okay," Tony said.

Abby, must be beside herself, he thought. She had probably brought out mop and broom Tony and Ziva, to cope.

"Of course, Tony," Adam said, with that Adam and his effortlessly cool jacket slipped into the crowd.

Ziva sat silent, long after Adam was gone.

"Do you want to go home, Tony?" Ziva asked, turning to face him.

"Home?" he asked.

Hadn't they had this conversation a couple of days ago.

"To your apartment," she elaborated.

"Yeah," he said. With her and with whatever she was looking for found.

"I will book you on the next flight," she said trying to hide the sadness that was creeping over her. "You will be back on American soil in forty eight hours."

American soil sounded pretty good right now. So, did his apartment. But only with her. They were a package deal now. She was stuck with him.

"It can wait," he declared, looking for her eyes.

"But the insurance paperwork," she replied.

"It can wait," he repeated. "I'm sure McGoo secured the place. Everything else can wait."

"Are you sure?" she asked. She looked up at him. Her eyes said everything, that her mouth could not. Her eyes begged him not go.

"I'm not going anywhere without you," he assured her. "It's like you said to Adam, we have each others backs."

"Thank you," she whispered.

He smiled back at her. Surprised by her comment.

"For what?" he asked.

"Being here," she replied. Anyone else would have run, and she knew that.

He just nodded in response. He wouldn't be anywhere else.

 **A/N** :

Thanks for all the lovely reviews, PM's, and faves/follows. Thank you for your kind words.

I don't own a thing. If I did, the 'Ziva David' tag on tumblr wouldn't get weird comments about how Ziva was strong, but never showed any emotions. Which is absolute nonsense.


	5. Chapter 5

He had decided that buses had a similar sort of rhythm the world over. Old people congregated in the front, speaking in two loud voices. Teenagers, in the back seat inflicting their audio pollution disguised as music on the rest on the bus. A toddler in a caregiver's arms, that switched between a delight and devil child with each stop.

It was Thursday, and they were on a bus. The past three days had been spent exploring. She slowly showed him more glimpses of her past. She had pointed out her old primary school, now with her favourite mural painted over, and her favourite tree cut down. The bakery, her mother had loved now had new owners, who did not make the bread the same. He had never been one for history, but he had listened with open ears as she recalled hers. She told him stories that had been passed down, and probably embellished over the years.

"What are we doing?" he asked. She stared out the window, looking at the boring parts of the city like a tourist.

They had taken a taxi to some boring apartment building, paid the chatty driver, and then hopped on a bus that seemed to be going back to where they came from.

"I want to tell you about my sister," she said as she turned to face him.

"Tali," he whispered.

Tali the opera singer, who never made it to seventeen. The best of us, she had told him, as they shared pizza and coffee in the rain.

"She was not supposed to be born in November," Ziva declared. "My mother was sick when she was pregnant with her. My grandmother, my Aunt and Mrs Bashan across the hall took turns in looking after me. My mother must have been very sick, so Tali was born a little bit early."

"You must have been so scared," he said.

Tiny feet walking down white walled hospitals. Adults clammy hands, and fake smiles. That smell of antiseptic. Adults talking in hushed tones. He knew that dance.

"I was glad when they came home," she said with a smile. "I had missed my mother. My Aunt called Tali a belated birthday present."

"Where was your Dad?' he asked.

"Away," she answered. "He came home the day after they did."

Her excited prace as she led her father to the bassinet where Tali was finally asleep. Her mother, with rings around her eyes, and her hand resting on her surgical scar. Her father, sitting with a glass of brown liquid while the sun was still up, as he came to terms with another daughter and the fact that Rivka could have no more children. He had been gone when his family needed him the most.

The bus stopped. An old lady got off, slowly. The noisy kid and the caregiver got off. A teenager slipped on.

"Even as children, Tali and I were very different," she whispered.

"How so?" he asked.

Tali dressed as a Princess for Purim, again. Ziva with dirt on the dress her mother had fought to get her into. Her mother's shouting as the dirt was discovered.

"Tali was very much my mother's child," Ziva said, with a small smile. "And I was my father's."

"When did you guys realise she could sing?" he asked, after a pause.

"She sung before she could talk," Ziva answered, with a smile. "She was always singing. She was very talented. Even before all the lessons, there was a raw talent."

Tali standing in front of the stage. Applause. Her father, sucking a deep breath as he tried to hide the tear in his eye. Her father tilting his head upward, trying to hide the tears that formed.

"For a little while I was jealous," she admitted.

Her mother was dead. Her ballet shoes now wrapped in tissue paper in a box under her bed. Her dance teacher had tried to stop, when she announced she was quitting. The angry phone call between her father and the teacher. Her father had muttered horrible names in Russian. Her father hanging up the call. That was the end of that, her father had said rubbing his hands together.

"Jealous?" he echoed.

"Jealous, that she kept singing," she whispered. "Jealous that she did not give up on her dreams."

Her father had never tried to silence the singing. Even if he did, Tali would have stood up to him. Tali was alway braver in that respect.

"Like you did," he whispered.

"I had to grow up," she uttered.

Ziva David little girl lost. Growing up before her time.

The bus stopped again. It traded two old people, and three teenagers, for what looked like university students. Hipsters with man buns, and ironic footwear.

"I always thought it would be me," she whispered.

"Thought what would be you?" he asked, as he placed her hand in his, and rested it on the top of her thigh.

"I thought it would me who died," Ziva whispered. "I thought I would leave Tali behind."

Those words hit him like a ton of bricks. He coughed, drowning under the weight of them.

"Why?" he asked.

"I was the sharp end of the spear," she said in a voice that sounded too much like her father's. "We had already lost our mother, and we were not prepared."

"I don't think anyone is ready to lose their mom," he whispered, as her head fell to his shoulder.

"I wanted Tali to be prepared to lose me," Ziva uttered.

Nausea stewed in his gut. He had seen a photograph of teenage Ziva and Tali, tucked in Eli David's wallet, discovered when Eli lay in the NCIS morgue. Ziva had been in her olive uniform, and Tali was wearing a t-shirt with peace sign on it, both of them had huge smiles on their faces. He tried to imagine the two of them talking about death.

"I made her promise that she would not name any child she may have after me," she whispered. "I did not want to be memorialised."

He choked on air. He wondered if Tali had ever asked the same thing of Ziva.

"She assured me that Ziva was far too ugly a name to inflict on any children she may have," Ziva said with a smile, as she got lost in a memory. "Not even as a middle name."

He coughed again. His chest ached.

"I think your name is beautiful," he uttered. He thought she was beautiful.

"I gave her advice," she whispered, ignoring his comment. "All the important stuff."

"Like what," he choked out.

"How to cure a hangover, the importance of condoms, and that stuffing your bra never looks natural," Ziva answered, her voice starting to lighten. "I was being practical."

Two dark haired girls giggling over the secrets of modern womanhood. Just as their mother and Aunt might have a quarter of a century ago. Just like their grandmothers might have done in far away places, a quarter of a century before that.

"I guess," he whispered.

"I also tried to give her advice on how to handle our father," Ziva whispered. "And promised her that our mother would have been proud of her, no matter what. She tried to convince me of the same, but I did not believe her."

He could not think of what to say, so he pulled her closer. Their bodies pressed together.

The bus stopped. A hipster got off. A pair of soldiers got on.

"I used to hate how she died," Ziva admitted, her gaze resting on the soldiers, who were on their phones.

He squeezed her hand hard in response.

"I could live with her dying," she whispered. "But I used to wish it had been another way. Illness or an accident."

"Why?" he asked.

"It will always be political," she uttered. "I know she would have hated that."

Once, a long time ago, during that summer Gibbs was drinking Corona's with Franks, and there was a war in Lebanon. Ziva had explained to him that in Israel, the personal was the political. He had wanted to counter with something smart, asking if that was not the case for most people. He just stood there silently. ZNN played more footage; baby faced soldiers, people huddled in shelters, the Prime Minister talking. She had gasped, as she heard of the death of some acclaimed author's son, the day after said author had given a conference with other authors calling for peace. He had known then that he would never fully understand.

"Tali wanted peace. She was not naive about it," Ziva said, as a tear fell down her face. "She was very political for her age. Her and Schmeil used to have these deep conversations, some of them would get quite heated."

He wondered in what world, was a sixteen year old so political. He supposed with a half-brother born to Palestinian mother, a father who had rocketed through the ranks of Mossad, and a sister who volunteered to do the same, there was no choice.

"She would hate that she would just be another statistic," she said.

Another number in a history book. Another reason for heated debates. Another dead child. A personal tragedy, that would always be political.

He sat silent. Ziva looked down at her lap. Her hand, still entwined with his. His fingers ached, but there was no way he was letting go.

The bus stopped, at an interchange he suspected as almost everyone got off, and then an almost equal amount of people got on.

"The pictures in the newspaper, after she died, they were over a year old," Ziva declared suddenly. "She was the first picture, in most of the papers because she was the youngest victim."

The youngest victim of ten. He knew that. He had looked it up, when he was convincing McGee to install surround sound in the squadroom, on a cold Thanksgiving evening. Tony had not had to hack anything, or look through secure files. It took a few search terms on google. He found a Hebrew newspaper clipping with ten black and white faces, staring back at him.

"My father had just taken new newspaper photographs," she uttered. "They were still being developed in the chemist. My Father was too cheap to pay for same day processing."

"Newspaper photos?" he asked, tilting his head.

"Every year my father took photographs of us that would be suitable for newspaper, if something were to happen," Ziva told him, in a calm voice, like she was reading a case report. "That way, it would be one less thing to think about."

He could only splutter and cough in response. It sounded exactly like the type of thing Eli David would do.

"I think she would have been glad that the photo was old," Ziva admitted, her voice slow. Her eyes looking into the distance. "In the last photos we had of her, she had a massive pimple on her cheek, and she had done something stupid with her hair."

She had been a teenage girl. A teenage girl with a pimple and a bad haircut. Those photos were supposed to be embarrassing ones to be brought up on the eve of a wedding, not the last ones ever taken.

The bus stopped again. One person got off. Two women chatting in learnt Hebrew, with accents from far away places got on.

"She had so many friends," Ziva said, a smile underneath wet eyes. "She made friends wherever she went. Once she got invited to five birthday parties in one weekend."

"Five?" he echoed with wide eyes. "Must have been four very disappointed people."

"She did not go to any of them," Ziva replied. "My father was home, and he wanted to get out of the city for the weekend."

Instead of eating birthday cake, and smiling as her friend opened presents, Tali had watched as her sister threw knives into trees with perfect accuracy. Tali had learnt how track footprints, that weekend.

"Oh," Tony said with gulp.

"All her friends turned up, after," Ziva whispered. "They paid Shiva calls with their parents. I did not know any of them, and I had gone to school with some of their siblings. There were so many people."

The apartment filled with young faces. Her Aunt Nettie trying to sit Shiva properly. Schmeil sitting with her, for a couple of hours. Ziva peaking out from the bedroom. Her father smelling like booze, and shuffling through papers. He was making a list of names, and polishing his gun. Somebody would pay for this, he had decided. The Mossad officers who slipped in and out, with envelopes of intel. Her Aunt Nettie's constant stream of tears. Ziva leaning on the door frame, because standing straight was too difficult, when she just wanted to world to swallow her up.

"I miss her," Ziva finally said, her voice distant. "Every day."

I think about her every day, she had said when they were following a blue haired woman.

The bus stopped again, but this time they got off. Ziva rushed to the door, dragging him behind her. The bus drove off.

"This is one stop from where she was supposed to get off," Ziva told him. "We are not too far from our old apartment. Tali liked to walk, so sometimes she got off early, and walked home."

She had nearly been home.

"Is this?" he paused. "Where it happened?"

Ziva nodded. She bit her lip. She pointed her finger just ahead at the busy intersection.

"There," she told him. "The bomber was told to inflict as much damage as possible. Ten people died. At least a dozen more with lifelong injuries."

He looked for some sort of sign that if had even happened. Some sort of mark, that told the world that a bus blew up, and suddenly there were empty seats at dining tables. That there were grieving families. There was no sign. The car horns honked. The taxi drivers shouted. Everyday people went about their lives, and broke traffic laws.

"The bomber was fifteen," Ziva told him. "He had lost his mother, and his father and brother were in prison."

Ripe for the picking, by a terrorist organisation, and Tony knew that. Kids killing kids.

"Our intel said that the plan was to wait until the bus stopped in front of the shopping centre, as there would have been more people, and more damage," Ziva told him, using her work voice. "Which was three stops from here, but he detonated early. We could never work out why."

Three stops. Tali had nearly escaped it.

"You read the report?" he asked.

"I memorised it," she whispered.

Of course she had.

"I was in our old apartment when it happened," Ziva said. "I was home earlier than expected from a mission. I had missed Tali's birthday. I asked my father not to tell her, I wanted to surprise her. I was cooking her favourite food. I had a present for her."

Her childhood home, one she had moved out of when she joined Mossad. An ache in her shoulder from a fight, on an anonymous street. A dead arms dealer with loose ties to HAMAS, half a world away. The oil frying in the pan. Tali's present wrapped in expensive wrapping paper. A book she had managed to find in her stopover in London, where she had switched passports. The book was not yet out in Israel, Tali would be so excited, especially to read it in English instead of in translation, because her English was finally good enough. The top forty playing on the radio. She had hummed along to the candy-sweet pop song.

"I knew," Ziva whispered. "As soon as it happened. I just felt this wave wash over me. I just knew."

The song interrupted by the solemn announcement. The faint sirens. She dropped the plate on the floor. Then she bolted out of the apartment. She ran. She got there in time to see the ZAKA with their ringlets collecting body parts, and the ambulance treating minor injuries on the side of the road.

"She was the best of us," she said, as she put her hand under her nose, trying to stop the tears. His arms wrapped around her. "She was the best of us."

Her tears soaked his chest. He held her tighter.

"I sometimes wonder what she would think of me," Ziva whispered, as she slowly came apart from him. Her eyes were red. Her face wet.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I wonder what she would think of who I have become," she uttered. "I think she would be ashamed of me."

"Why?" he asked.

"I let myself get caught up in my father's world," Ziva said. "I always promised her I would not."

"I think she would understand," he said. Like she had much of a chance to escape Eli's world, he thought bitterly.

"And I have done horrible things," Ziva whispered. "She had not even been dead a month, and I went to Ramallah with only my gun, and a list of names."

"You were grieving," he said.

"I wanted revenge," she replied. She wanted someone else to suffer like she was. She wanted to watch the life slip out of someone.

"I know," he reasoned.

"I am glad she did not get to see what I have become," she told him.

Glad Tali had not lived long enough to see her kill Ari. Glad Tali had not seen her pursuit of Ilan. Glad Tali had not seen her actions, in what they had all come to term the Rivkin affair.

"Ever think she might be proud," he asked.

"Proud of what?" she spat.

"Proud of you," he said. "People are proud of you, you know."

"Who?" she asked, her voice soft. Her eyes pinched. She did not believe a word he was saying. Nobody was ever proud of her.

"People," he repeated. "Gibbs, Ducky, Abby, McGee, and autopsy gremlin. Me."

He was so goddamn proud of her.

"Proud of what?" she asked. "What I have ever done to make someone proud?"

She had wanted to make her father proud. So she had fought to be the best. She had presented her ribbons, her prizes and her targets each with a perfect bullseye, but he had never said those words. He simply nodded and dismissed her.

"So much," he said with a sigh, why couldn't she see it. "You speak like ten languages and you didn't even go to college, you knew every single question of those hundred questions for your citizenship test, and you're a damn good agent. Gibbs and Vance are always saying so."

She looked back at him. Her eyes wide. Was she hearing what he was saying, he wondered.

"I worked hard for those things," she said finally.

"You should be proud," he repeated. "People are proud of you."

People were proud, that every time she got knocked down, she simply brushed the dirt off, and got back up again.

She moved back into his arms. Her head, heavy on his chest.

"I am," she whispered.

 **A/N** :

Sorry for the delay. I originally had another chapter for this, but it didn't fit anymore. My job decided to double my workload (but not my pay), so I have less time to play with these characters in my head. Also, just finished The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss, and well that was such a great book that I couldn't think of doing anything else in my recreation time for a couple of days. Highly recommend that book.

This chapter also needed a bit of time to ferment, because well it's a heavy one. I did a lot of backspacing and thinking with this one (more than usual). If I got something wrong, please let me know.

Thanks for all the kind words. Much love.

I don't own a thing, if I did a certain character's "death" wouldn't have been used to fuel manpain.


	6. Chapter 6

"We should not have wasted the morning," Ziva declared as she crossed the busy supermarket car park without even checking to see if a car was coming. A horn honked. A soccer mom behind the wheel shook her hand and muttered something in Hebrew.

"I wouldn't call what we did this morning a waste," he said. They had spent the morning in bed.

He found himself almost running to catch up to her. How could she walk so fast in this heat? And in that dress, he wondered.

"Well no," she said softly, as they walked through the doors of the supermarket. The air conditioning hit him, and he breathed a sigh of relief. "But I would like to have had more time to cook."

"It'll be fine," he told her, "Doesn't this country run on its own version of on time, anyway."

A hint of a smile crossed her face.

"You cannot dispute the setting sun, Tony," Ziva replied.

Sunsets, Shabat and Schmeil it all made some sort sense in his head. He wondered, why they had been in an Israel a whole week, but were only now going to visit Schmeil.

"Schmeil won't mind," Tony said, as he caught up to her, and rested his hand on the small of her back.

"I wanted more time to cook," Ziva replied. His stomach grumbled.

"Schmeil won't mind," Tony answered.

Ziva pulled out a trolley from the collection in the front. Just as she was starting to move the trolley, he took it from her.

"I've seen your driving," he told her as they stood in close proximity. He smiled, as he realised he could see down the front of her dress, to think he had once told her that her cleavage was not worth dying over.

"You are wrong," she told him, as they walked into the busy supermarket.

Toddlers squawked. Old people carefully weighed their produce. Hurried parents, rushed around the aisles in a familiar route.

"Not about your driving,' he uttered. "Little Miss Too Fast Too Furious."

She placed a cucumber in the trolley, and crossed something off her list. Some of the list was English, and some in Hebrew, her head was in two worlds.

"About Schmeil," she answered. Not giving him the satisfaction of admitting her driving was at best fast and furious. "Schmeil cares about food."

He remembered the dinner they had all those months ago. Schmeil had eaten like the food was going to run out, Ziva had instructed Tony not to let a scrap of food remain on his plate, because Schmeil was weird about food waste. _When you have been starved for long enough_ , she had said in that soft distant voice that told him she knew too much. Tony had noticed the set of numbers etched in Schmeil's papery forearm, but it was never discussed.

"I'm sure he'll be happy just to see you," Tony said, as Ziva placed some tomatoes in the trolley.

"He said he is excited to see us," Ziva replied, as she crossed another thing off her list.

Us. They were an us now. Package deal. Tony and Ziva versus the world. The thought of being an us no longer scared him.

"You excited to see him?" Tony asked, as he pretended to look at the bell peppers.

"Of course," Ziva declared, with a smile that crossed he whole face, "He is my Schmeil."

"Your Schmeil," he echoed.

"I feel like I need his wise words at the moment," Ziva said as she picked up a single lemon.

Tony wouldn't mind a dose of Schmeil's wise words.

"You gonna ask him about what you found out?" he asked. Plastic bags rustled. Ziva squeezed an avocado lightly, before putting in the trolley.

She stiffened, and took a deep breath in and out.

"I will talk to him about lots of things," Ziva said, as she held up a eggplant. He wondered exactly how much Ziva was planning to cook.

"So you're gonna ask his opinion on Spielberg's Munich compared to the real thing?" Tony asked.

She raised her hand to her forehead and pinched rubbed it. The shopping list tucked under her arm.

"I do not know," Ziva said rubbing her forehead "Not everything is like your movies, you know."

"I know," he said quietly. There were days when he wished it was. Where everyone got their happy endings.

"He must have his reasons for not telling me," Ziva continued.

"Yeah, but you know now, so you two should talk about it," he uttered.

"Schmeil is not my Father," she said, looking to the distance. "I doubt he would have been proud about what he did."

Was anyone who worked in the shadows ever proud of what they did? Weren't they all just plodding along, in the belief they were doing the greater good. Like had had told her once in the NCIS elevator, better them than someone who did not sign up for it.

"Okay," he said.

"Things are different now," Ziva told him. "I do not want to rock the boat."

She looked to him, with a creased forehead, wanting to know if she got the idiom right. He nodded.

"Different how," he asked, as he ripped off two plastic bags from the roll, and held them in his hands.

"Schmeil is the last one," Ziva said in a heavy voice. She held her necklace between a thumb and forefinger.

"Last one, what?" he asked, still holding the plastic bags, between his fingers. The friction made his fingertips warm.

"He is the last one who knew them, too," she finally said.

He looked down at his shoes. She didn't need to say their names.

"Schmeil knew them, he is the last one who knew what my sister's voice sounded like, and what my mother cooking tasted like. I can tell you the stories, but it is not the same," she whispered, her eyes getting glassy.

He shuffled on his feet. Discomfort rose through him.

"He knows what it was like when my father actually laughed." she whispered. "I know you do not believe that my father ever laughed, but he did."

She was right, he couldn't picture Eli David laughing. He couldn't even imagining him smiling, a genuine smile. Things must have been different before Tali died, he decided.

"I'm still not getting it," he said. She shot him a sad look. Her shoulders rose and fell.

"I cannot lose him too," Ziva said softy. "He can have his secrets. I do not want to talk about this anymore."

With that his heart broke inside of him.

He scrunched the plastic bag up in his hand. The stuffed it in his pocket, was the considered stealing he wondered idly. She placed a vegetable he could not name in the trolley. Lines were crossed on her list, she hummed along to the sugary sweet pop song that was being pumped through the supermarket.

"Is it just Schmeil we're feeding?" he asked, after a few minutes of quiet. He scanned the trolley. They were moving from the produce section to somewhere with more packets. "You've got enough for an army here."

She scoffed. He had no idea how much an army brigade could eat.

"I will make a meal for us all to share this evening," Ziva answered. "I also want to make Schmeil something for tomorrow. Maybe leave him some leftovers. He will eat them."

"You making that stew thing?" he asked.

The warm stew with slow cooked beef and root vegetables, that always made an appearance in half a dozen tupperware containers when the team had weekend duty in the winter months. They would all devour it, thanking Ziva between greedy mouthfuls. The proud smile she wore as she watched them, always made his heart skip a beat.

"That stew thing?" she asked, a smile on her face.

"You know with the beef, and the beans, and all the vegetables," he continued. The warm bowl of goodness, that he would blame for those few pounds he gained in the colder months.

"Not quite," she said as they moved to the meat section. Ziva looked at the chickens, her face scrunched up in thought. "I'll make a slow cooked chicken and rice instead. The one I make for you and the team is too heavy for this time of year."

More packets were placed in the trolley. He already knew he was going to yelp when Ziva paid for all of this. Hadn't he read about some sort of mini-protest about the price of food in this country.

"I'll try to make it the way my mother made it," Ziva declared. "Schmeil liked her cooking very much."

Her mind tumbled down a rabbit hole, as she found herself thinking of Schmeil's old apartment. His warm smile, when the three David women turned up with foil wrapped plates. It wall to wall books, in dozens of languages. Schmeil showing her all of the musty books, and lamenting that he could not save all the books. _When you have seen books being burnt, Zivileh_ , he would say in that voice that made her mother anxious. Going to visit Old Mr Pinkhus as they used to call him, could almost make her forget that her father had not been home for weeks. Almost.

"Is that how you met Schmeil?" he asked.

She raised her eyebrow to her hairline and gave her best, ya think look, channeling her inner Gibbs. If only he had been quicker with the camera.

"How else would a three year old meet a man in his fifties?" Ziva asked in her deadpan voice.

He shrugged. He had always just assumed that anyone from Ziva's past was met via her father or her Mossad connections

"My mother got a job at the university, something that involved a lot of paperwork, but meant she could keep the same hours as daycare. She dealt with Schmeil a lot because he was not very organised," Ziva said with a smile. "They became friends, she and him could talk for hours."

"About what?" he asked.

"History, current events, and books mostly," Ziva said.

So that where her bookworm tendencies came from, he thought.

"My mother was a very intelligent woman." she continued. "Schmeil was always trying to convince her to finish her studies. She was pregnant with me when she finished her bachelor's degree, and had done very well. Every few years Schmeil would try and convince her to do her Masters. She was very interested in Jewish populations from Arab countries, and their history."

"Did she do it?" he asked, as they navigated yet another aisle. Ziva put something that looked like cream cheese in the trolley.

"No," Ziva said sadly. "She never did."

She thought of her mother's bed . Where she and Tali had hid still dressed in their new black funeral dresses. It had smelt like her; expensive perfume and cigarettes. The musty book she found on her mother's nightstand, with a business card for a professor used as a bookmark. The sadness that fell over Ziva, as she realized her mother would never finish the book.

"Why?" he asked.

"She had Tali, then my grandmother got sick and died, something always came up," Ziva said with a shrug. "Besides, my father was not exactly volunteering to do the school run so she could study."

The thought of Eli David, with child sized backpacks on his shoulder, tying tiny shoelaces or wrangling wild curls into pigtails, made him smirk.

"It is not a unique story," Ziva said with a shrug.

He knew that. They had seen enough cases, where bright women with good career prospects fall in love with a Marine or Navy guy and suddenly find themselves hauling cross-country every few years, because of orders, no chance to get a good footing on the career ladder.

"I think that's why she pushed Tali and I, never to give up on our dreams." Ziva said. Her voice got distant again.

She directed the trolley down the aisle. She put more packets in the trolley.

"I always liked that Schmeil was untouched by my father's world," Ziva said quietly. "His world was so consuming, that sometimes I forgot that other people did not live like us."

Her friends in school did not know how to strip down and polish a gun. Her friends at school learnt French because their mothers had read somewhere that it was good for their brains, not because it would help on future missions. Other people's fathers took them on adventures for the sheer joy, not to test their observation skills.

"Is that why you don't want to talk to him about Germany?" Tony asked.

"I am not angry with him. Not for what he did, or for not telling me," Ziva reasoned. "I just liked having someone who was not a part of all that."

"You should really talk to him about this," he told her.

"I know," she said. "I will try. He has lived through enough. I will not push him."

He followed her as they moved closer to checkouts. He heard the wails of toddlers. A father was trying to defuse a temper tantrum. Older kids whined. They were near the snack aisle. He spied shiny packets, and cartoon characters under Hebrew writing. He tugged at Ziva's dress.

"You are a child," she cried out, a smile on her face.

"I didn't have breakfast," he reminded her. Not that he was complaining about what they had done that morning.

"If you have spent less time in the shower, you would have had time for breakfast," she told him.

"But I had to look my best for Schmeil," he whined, as he started picking up what looked like chip packets. "It's not every day one has dinner with the great Schmeil Pinkhus."

"I'm glad you shaved," she retorted, as she rubbed her hand on his face, cupping his chin. "You cannot pull off the hobo chic look."

"I'm going to let that comment slide," he said feigning hurt. She patted his cheek, and pursed her lips.

"I'd like it you shaved somewhere else too," Ziva joked, as her eyes darted to his bottom.

"Whats this?" he asked, as he picked up a packet with a cartoon character on it.

"Bamba," she said, "it's made from peanuts."

He placed one packet in the trolley. Then looked at the display, and threw two more packets in the trolley, for good measure.

"You don't need that," Ziva told him. "I am cooking quite enough."

He looked down at the full trolley. Schmeil would be eating leftovers for the rest of the week.

"DiNozzo's can always eat," he told her, with his grin. "It's our superpower."

He picked up another packet, the picture of the contents looked like a little bit like pasta. The packet had a sombrero on it, whatever it was was intended to be Mexican flavour. He doubted it would taste anything like Mexican food.

"Now what is this?" he asked.

"Bisili," Ziva said with a smile. "You'd probably like the grill flavour."

A thousand tiny stories came to mind. She wanted to tell Tony all of them. She wanted to tell him about the boy in high school math class, who only ever seemed to eat bamba and bisili out of a ziplock baggie, with the very occasional jaffa orange for health. How that acne faced boy had smelt. She wanted to tell him about the time she and Tali tried to feed one of her Uncle's horses bisili, reasoning that they would like it much better than the apple they were supposed to feed it. How Tali had shrieked as the horse greedily licked her hand.

"What's your favourite?" he asked, as he held up packets.

"I don't eat junk food," she declared, as she eyed the falafel flavoured bissli. She threw a couple of packets in the trolley. Did it still taste the same? Like it had, when Ima gave it to them before explaining that their father was getting a new apartment.

"Sure." he said as he raised his eyebrow, to his even distancing hairline. "What about when your were a kid?"

"My parents did not buy us junk food," Ziva declared, but was unable to keep a straight face.

"Thats bull, I bet mini-ninja Ziva David whined and whined, whenever you passed through the snack aisle," he declared. "Besides you grew up in the eighties, that was like the ultimate decade for snack food. None of these quinoa snack balls and carrot sticks kids these days have to suffer through."

A smile crossed her face.

"So what was your favourite?" he asked again.

"I had a sweet mouth when I was a child," she finally admitted. She picked up a packet, and handed it to him. It was chocolate covered something. "Its called Kilk, it is chocolate covered stuff, like cornflakes or wafer."

He threw a couple of packets in the trolley. Chocolate covered anything was his kryptonite.

"Sweet tooth," he mumbled, but she wasn't listening.

"Tali and I used to love it," Ziva told him. "We tried to feed some Kilk and Bisili to my Uncle's horses once."

He snort laughed.

"How old were you?" he asked between giggles.

"Seven," she said. He pictured her with pigtails and dirt on her dress. "My uncle and my mother thought it was funny, but my father not so much."

She took something from the shelf that looked a bit like a kitkat.

"My mother used to bring these home, and say that my father had sent them to us. She said it was his way of showing he missed us, when he was away." Ziva said as she held the small packet. "I found out that she was buying them when I was nine. My father did not even try and continue the lie. He told me that there was no way he could send us candy while he was away. I should not have been so silly."

His gut twisted, as he thought of her lost innocence. Would have killed Eli to let her be a kid, just for a while.

"She always tried to protect us," Ziva continued. "To hide who my father really was. Sometimes I am not really sure if that was the best idea."

"I'm sure she thought it was," he told her.

"Of course," she said as she put three candy bars in trolley. "Schmeil likes these too."

Schmeil Pinkhus, seemed to be eighty going on eight.

"Is there anything else you really loved?" he asked.

He scanned the snack aisle looking at all the packets. What had she and Tali eaten on those long road trips of Haifa? What had she been given as a reward for a good report card? What had she begged her father for, when they went to the supermarket for milk and bread?

"Why are you so desperate to know?" she asked back. "It is pointless information."

"I love knowing pointless stuff about you," he said, with his thousand watt grin. He wanted to know everything about her.

A smile crept over her face. She did that half laugh thing that he found adorable. Old doubts tried to creep in as she wondered why he wanted to know so much about her, but she pushed them aside. Tony had no malice, he was just curious.

She walked a few feet down the aisle and appeared again with what looked like pudding cups. The box encasing them had a cow on them.

"This is Milky," she told him. "I liked this as a child. It's sort of like pudding, with whipped cream on top. The whipped cream is amazing."

"Was it your favourite?" he asked.

She looked down at her shoes, finding herself remembering that time she and Tali had Bamba and Milky for dinner, in those hazy weeks after their mother died. Tali said she would give up all the junk food in the world, if it meant Ima came home. Ziva had simply given her sister the last pudding cup knowing that Tali's wishes were futile.

"I guess so," she said. "My mother used to refuse to buy it for us because no matter how she tried to ration them, we would always finish the box the same day she brought it.. I always managed to sneak into the kitchen and get these."

He imagined her pint-sized and using those newly acquired ninja skills to steal treats.

"Well I know what I'll be doing, while you and Schmeil talk," he declared, looking at the pudding cups with a smile on his face.

"If you eat all my Milky, I will hurt you," she warned, pointing a finger just millimeters from his nose. Her face was all serious.

"Okay, I'll leave you one," he told her, before placing a small kiss on her lips. They broke apart. "Maybe two."

 **A/N** :

Thanks for all the lovely kind words. It means a lot.

The main reason this took so long, is because of the research into Israeli snacks. Thanks to Lipush and Mechabeira for very important information re Israeli snacks. If i have gotten anything wrong, I apologize.

I'll try and be quicker with the next one. Schmeil will make an appearance.

I don't own a thing. But thank you NCIS for creating characters, which I can use as one of my many work passwords. Seriously, we have to renew those things every month or so. I'm running out of characters.


	7. Chapter 7

Tony closed the door on Schmeil's senior living apartment, leaving Ziva to her cooking. He would have been quite content to watch her hum away as she made a dozen different dishes, but Schmeil wanted to go for an early evening stroll, and Tony had been dragged along too.

Schmeil leaned on the safety railing that hung in the hallway. He was leaning hard, taking careful steps. He clutched tightly to his walking stick. The walking stick he had acquired in the six months since they had last seen him. _It was a minor fall_ Schmeil had told them, as Ziva had started to sound off about not being told. Watching the older man, Tony suspected the walking stick would be permanent addition to Schmeil's effortless cool. Still, they three of them operated within lies of omission, Schmeil did not talk about his health, and neither Ziva nor Tony mentioned that both Mossad and NCIS were concerned for their safety.

"I understand you are to thank for the Pesek Zman," Schmeil uttered. "Ziva is too restrained to have picked it up herself."

Tony looked at the older man blankly. He reached up to his eyes, and rubbed sleep from them. Much to Ziva's amusement, Tony had fallen asleep, curled in Schmeil's huge reading chairs, with a cosy Agatha Christie book swiped from Schmeil's wall to wall to shelves, on his chest. The soft lull of Ziva and Schmeil's Hebrew easing him into a light doze, which had become a full scale nap rather quickly.

"The candy," Schmeil clarified. "It has been a long time since Ziva and I have shared such a snack, while we talked. It brought back memories."

Tony smiled, as he thought of Ziva and Schmeil sharing chocolate bars, and laughing like children. He was almost disappointed he had napped through it.

"What did you and Ziva talk about?" Tony asked.

They passed another ghost-like older person hobbling along, hunched over a zimmer frame. These places gave Tony the heebie jeebies, because of his job, he had been so used to death being quick and bloody. He was still getting used to the possibility of being a slow decay. How long before Ducky ended up in place like this? Or Senior he wondered. It would only be another thirty-odd years, before Tony himself, could end up in one of those places, if Gibbs' ridiculous work schedule did not kill him first.

"She told me about you and her," Schmeil reported, a smile crossing his old face. "You two are going steady, yes?"

Tony smiled to himself, of course Schmeil would use such an antiquated term.

"Something like that," Tony uttered. The two of them hadn't really discussed labels, and he supposed partner still counted as the best description of them.

"I am glad," Schmeil said still smiling, "Though I must say it is about time."

Tony laughed. So did Schmeil leaning heavily on his walking stick.

"Yeah," Tony said, "took us a while to get the timing right there."

"Matters of the heart should not be rushed," Schmeil uttered, still smiling. "What is meant to be, is meant to be."

"Is that why you wanted us to walk?" Tony asked. "To tell me that if I break Ziva's heart, you'll kill me with your walking stick."

Schmeil let out a loud laugh, which startled Tony, how could such a little man make such a noise.

"If you break Ziva's heart, you certainly will be sorry," Schmeil uttered, slipping into a serious voice. "But what makes you think I will hurt you."

"Thought you might want to breakout those Mossad tricks," Tony declared. "I'm sure you're pretty good. Even if the ninja skills have been out of action for forty years."

Schmeil stopped, sucked in a deep breath, and a dark look washed over his face. Guilt stewed in Tony's gut.

"I was not trained like Ziva and Eli were," Schmeil said swallowing thickly. "All I did was gather information."

"Okay," Tony said calmly.

"I am not proud of what I did," Schmeil uttered, as he stopped again, looking into the distance.

Tony sighed. Deep down were any of them truly proud of what they did. He had taken life many times, because it was supposed to help the greater good. But like Ziva once told him tearfully in an elevator, as the prepared to bury another comrade, weren't they just making targets of themselves?

"I have told Ziva the story. She can tell you the story, maybe when you drive up to Haifa." Schmeil continued. Tony knew nothing of this proposed trip to Haifa, but nodded along. "I am too tired to tell the story again. Not now."

"You don't need to tell me," he told Schmeil.

Schmeil did not owe him the story. He was curious of course, half of NCIS were curious, but he would never push the old man for the scoop.

"I must assure you, I never killed anyone," Schmeil said. "But my actions have indirectly led to someone's death. That is something I must live with."

"You did what you had to do," Tony uttered. Schmeil moved slightly.

They walked quietly into the outside. It was still so hot. The sun was lowering, dipping into the horizon. The sunset was coming. The two men shuffled along in silence. A elderly man, with legs nothing more than stumps zipped past them in a wheelchair.

"Ziva and I," Schmeil paused, looking up at the sky. "We talked about other things. More recent history."

"Did ya talk about why she wanted to come to Israel?" Tony asked softly.

"We talked for a long time while you napped," Schmeil uttered. "About the past, and those who have been lost."

"She took me on a bus," Tony uttered. "The same one, Tali-"

"The number nine," Schmeil said with a sigh. "She kept the timetable in her bag for years."

Old people milled around, young companions by their side. The garden was a popular place for those kicked out of the tiny kitchens in the apartments.

"And she keeps showing me places," Tony uttered. "Telling me stories, but they're always so…. "

"Tragic," Schmeil interjected, as words failed the younger of the two men. "Ziva has lost a lot. Some might say she has lost too much."

"I don't know what I am supposed to do," Tony whispered, as they sat down by a sagged maybe, all these emotions weighing on Tony had increased his physical weight. "Do I just follow her like a lost puppy, as she unearths all the crap she's kept buried for god knows' how long?"

"Honestly Tony," Schmeil sighed. "A part of me is surprised she has let you come so far. You and I both know how independent, Ziva can be."

Independent, people usually used that to describe her. She was the princess who saved herself, and usually whoever else was in danger too. Didn't people realize she was got sick of fighting sometimes.

"Yeah," he gulped. "But we've only been here a week, might have our Casablanca ending yet."

Schmeil smirked with recognition.

"She told me you fancied yourself as Bogart," Schmeil said. "But I'd save your parting words. They will not be needed."

"How can you be so sure?" Tony asked.

"I have known my Ziva since she was three," Schmeil said, his face glowing. He held up his fingers to illustrate his point. "Three."

"Bet she was a hell of a kid," Tony muttered.

"Oh what a child she was." Schmeil uttered, face still glowing "So full of life, and so very intelligent, she always had a dozen different questions for me. I think I used to look forward to her visits as much as she did, and not just because Rivka usually brought some of her cooking."

"Ziva told me she was a good cook," Tony muttered.

"Rivka was a remarkable woman," Schmeil declared. His wrinkly old face, moved into a smile. "Truly remarkable."

A quiet brewed between the two men. Tony noticed Schmeil was wearing socks in sandals, and frowned. He had once described Schmeil to McGee as a dapper gentleman, with his hats and three piece suits. The socks and sandals look, lost him some dapper points.

"Have you seen Ziva like this before?" Tony finally asked. "It's like she's lost."

"I have seen her during many difficult times," Schmeil said sadly.

His aged oft-broken heart tightened as memories played in his head like an old film. Ziva's stoic face as she held Tali's hand during their mother's funeral. She looked so young dressed in her new black dress, yet she was so old at the same time. Innocence her mother had fought so hard to preserve, now gone forever.

That vicious fight Ziva and Schmeil had when Ziva revealed that she would not be going to university, but joining Mossad. They had never fought, beyond healthy debate about books, she always claimed Schmeil never giving American authors the time of day. How she had stormed out of his apartment, the door bouncing on its hinges.

Then Tali's somber funeral, a few short years later, where Schmeil had wrapped her in a hug, and held her tight because he feared she might fall if she let go. How Schmeil had worried for her, when she wrote down a list of names, people who would pay because the world was missing Tali David. How he tried to say it would not have been what Tali wanted.

That time, where she let herself into his apartment, looking for stories about those who had killed their siblings, and trying not to sob as she read Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, and the myth of the Golden Fleece. How she had been unable to look at her hands, as Schmeil handed her tea and then later strong alcohol that burnt her throat, making her sputter. She had never confessed to her part in the spilling of Ari's blood, but Schmeil knew enough to read between the lines.

"Was she like this then?" Tony asked. "When her mother died? or when she lost Tali?"

Ziva's losses swirled in his head, tasting like salt as he said their names. In her thirty short years on this planet, so much had been taken.

"I think this is different," Schmeil uttered softly. "She is the last one left now."

Schmeil eyes got distant again. He rested his hand on the string of fading numbers on his forearm. Schmeil too, was far to acquainted with loss, but his burdens were not to be shared with Tony.

"Their is a weight in being the last one left," Schmeil uttered, still looking far away. Tony looked at the older man, wondering how much of what he was saying was about him, and how much was about Ziva. "When you have lost so much."

"How do I make it better for her?" Tony asked. Goddammit, that was all he wanted to do.

"Do you not see," Schmeil said softly. "You already are."

"I'm tagging along, while she digs up the past," Tony uttered. "I just stand there, and she tells me things."

"There is always a bravery in choosing to love," Schmeil said. "Even more so, when you are the last one left. Not all of us are that brave."

"I can't live without her," Tony admitted his voice cracking.

He had told her those words, squirming as the truth serum made his heart beat too fast, and his head ache. He had meant them then. Even then, when the arguments had the previous May echoed in his head. Now, he knew them to be more than true. If he didn't have her, the world would stop spinning.

Schmeil works sunk into him. A tiny part of him, a voice he tried to keep buried, wondered why Ziva would waste her bravery and love on a schmuck like him. But if she ever left, especially now, he knew it would destroy him.

Schmeil smiled at him, his eyes glassy.

"The whole reason I was in Germany all those years ago," Schmeil said. "Was because even though I had created quite the life for myself in Israel, the type of my life my parents could have only dreamed of for me. There were times, when I was still a lost boy."

Tony swallowed thickly. Ziva had told him a little of Schmeil's painful past, and a goggle search done after meeting the great man had filled in the rest. Schmeil had been the only one of his family who was not marched to death in Hitler's Camps. Then when the war was over, Schmeil barely sixteen had spent years in a displaced persons camp, and then gotten on a ship to Israel months before the War of Independance. Schmeil had probably been snuck into what was then British Palestine by an early version of the Mossad, that took displaced survivors to the land for the Jews.

"I went back to where I had been born. I no longer considered it home, my home was my apartment in Tel Aviv where I could smell the ocean and where my books were," Schmeil continued. "But, I thought if I went back. If I retraced my steps, that somehow I would undo things. I thought if I found our old apartment, where my mother had told me to wait the night the S.S came. I was in my forties, but I think a tiny part of me still thought that she would turn the corner laden with shopping my little brother and sister in tow."

Tony sucked in a breath. His head spinning. It hurt his heart to bear witness to someone else's loss.

"But the apartment building was knocked down, the bakery we loved no longer sold Challah on Friday afternoon, and the butcher shop hung pig sausage in the window," Schmeil said, his eyes looking into the distance. "Around that time somebody offered me their love, but I was never brave enough. Never brave enough to go all in. I never let them in fully. I had already lost too much. I thought if I kept them at arm's length, that it would be okay. In the end I lost them too, and it hurt."

"So what do I do?" Tony asked.

"Let her, let you in," Schmeil uttered. "I know at the moment this is hard. But I also know this would be different journey, if you were not by her side."

"Yeah" Tony said softly. "You know if I could give her the moon I would."

"She is not asking for the moon, Tony," Schmeil uttered, as he looked up to the sky. The sun was much closer setting. The weather had cooled. "We must move. It is nearly sunset and Ziva will not be happy if our stroll, makes us late for dinner."

"Yeah," he said. "You can't dispute the setting sun."

Schmeil dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief he kept in his pocket. Tony stood up, feeling lighter than he had since they landed in Israel. He offered his hand to Schmeil but the older man refused, as he slowly stood up.

"You are a good man, Tony," Schmel said, a smile beaming across his face. "A real mensch."

Tony found himself standing up straighter. He didn't think that he was a good man. Maybe, one day he could be. Being with Ziva made him want to be a better man.

"A good man," Schmeil repeated. "I am glad my Ziva has found such a good man."

His throat got dry. He wanted to say something, list all the bad things he had done. Instead, he simply nodded, and husted Schmeil toward the apartment.

 **A/N** :

Thanks for all the lovely kind words.

Apologies this took so long. Since, we got such little time with Schmeil, he is a hard character to get right.

Schmeil as a survivor of the Holocaust was borrowed from Mechaberia. Read her amazing fic Holy Land, for a much better interpretation of Schmeil.

I don't own a thing.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N** : Don't usually put these up here, but this chapter is a heavy one.

The house Haifa was one that had only housed ghosts for too long. Even now, those that were living slept in its beds, the ghosts still haunted the dust-filled corners.

Ziva woke to smell her mothers stuffed peppers, licking her lips in her sleep. She walked down the darkened hallway, hearing the constant bickering that was her mother and Aunt Nettie, the soundtrack of her summers. Everything was a tense discussion; what to eat, where to go, and what music to play. _You and Tali will be just like us, Zivaleh_ , Nettie had told her the summer before her mother died.

That summer, the one the came after a winter of small tragedies; her father leaving, her friend Jamil getting caught in a retaliatory strike, and the death of the Prime Minister, shot by a fellow Jew. This all went hand in hand with the daily horrors of puberty. Ziva had been so desperate to get out of hot concrete Tel Aviv, that summer. How she hoped that summer would stretch as far as the horizon. The heat had scorched her back, and she had peeled her skin, shedding her skin like a snake. She had stepped out a new girl. No not a girl, a woman. _Oh my, you are a woman_ now motek, her mother had declared with such joy as Ziva asked her for sanitary napkins.

She breathed deep. The tea in front of her steamed. She held her hands on the warm cup. How many times, had she and Tali fallen asleep to the murmurings of their mother and Aunt, gas-bagging over vodka disguised by teacups and cigarettes. Ziva and Tali had hidden under soft cotton sheets, and shared secrets and giggles of their own, over sweeter vices.

"Ziva," Tony called from the door frame. She had heard him padding around, but he hoped he might go back to bed.

She looked at the clock, it had been forty minutes since she had slipped from the covers of the warm bed, and walked through this house that memories had built.

"I did not mean to wake you," she whispered, as she shifted in her seat. "Sorry."

Looking up at him, dressed in only boxers, and hair all mussed up. Hadn't she compared his morning hair to a porcupine once, or something like that. Maybe, that had been one of those idioms she got mixed up.

"Come back to bed," he whined. He rubbed his eyes, like a sleepy child. "I miss you."

"Go back to bed," she breathed. "I will join you later."

He sighed, and walked toward her. He sat down in the creaky dining chair, in front of her. He examined the tea, touching the pot with his fingers, flinching as heat ran through them.

"You weren't sleeping well," he muttered.

She had tossed and turned in her sleep, bobbing like a sailboat in the choppy sea.

"No," she replied. She was sure he had not noticed, she was sure he was dead to the world.

"I've gotten so used to your snoring, that I can't sleep without it," he told her. "Wanna talk about it?"

"My snoring," she deflected.

He shot her his thousand watt grin.

"You're spending too much time with me," he whispered. "Deflecting has always been my avoidance strategy."

She'd be quoting movies next.

"When did you become so self aware?" she replied.

"You're not the only one who's been doing some thinking on this trip," he muttered. "We should talk. People should talk about what wakes them up in the middle of the night."

"It is silly," she whispered. She ran her hands over her lap.

"I'm listening," he uttered softly. He knew whatever was keeping her up, was far from silly.

She pulled the second cup, she had gotten from the cupboard, and poured him a cup of tea. His nose screwed up as he took a sip. Americans never could appreciate tea.

"I should not be so surprised," she finally said.

"Surprised about what?" he asked. He was too tired for her to be speaking in riddles.

"That I dreamed about my her," she said, hiding her lips behind the tea cup.

"Her," he echoed. The name Tali rested on his tongue, ready to be spoken.

"My mother," she whispered. His eyes darted away, his own mother must have come to mind. Rivka David and Elizabeth DiNozzo were ghosts in opposite corners of the room.

"You never talk about her," he said, shifting in his seat.

She looked back at him frowning. She had, she had been talking about her since they landed. But Ima's stories were always intertwined with somebody else's. The bakery where they would buy the challah. The stories, she had told him in the supermarket while they bickered over snacks.

"We have had this conversation," she replied. The tea cup returned to the table her lips appeared again.

"About mine, not yours," he shot back. He noticed a selection of photo frames on the wall, and pointed to a plump woman with dark hair and glasses. "Is that her?"

Ziva let out a laugh, and shook her head.

"That is my Aunt Nettie," she told him. "Her and my mother did not look alike, but they were very alike in personality, that is why they bickered so much."

She thought of the contrast. Her Father and his brother, according to the old photographs anyway had been almost identical, and often mistaken for one another, but their personalities were poles apart. Her Uncle, soft and quiet, who never rose his voice. Her father, had a voice that bellowed.

He rested his chin in his hands, and looked up at her.

"Tell me about her," he begged, "them."

In the near-dark, his aging eyes settled on a photograph of slender-figured Rivka David with her crazy eighties hair, holding chubby baby Ziva, in front of the sea. Ziva had been a ridiculously cute child, especially in a little sunhat.

"They grew up in Haifa," Ziva told him. "In an apartment which was too small and too loud. My Aunt said that she and my mother used to say they were going to get houses next to each other right by the beach."

Her Aunt had told her tales of the too-thin apartment wails of those from Europe, for whom sleep would never again come easy. Men from the Arab lands, sat on the roof and looked up into the sky, still dreaming of Iraq, Morocco, and Yemen. Two curly-haired sisters huddled under covers dreaming up new lives, while their parents fought about the forever empty piggy bank.

He nodded. The house had a slight beach view, not quite on the beach but close enough.

"So they brought this house together?" he asked.

Ziva shook her head.

"My father brought my mother this house, the summer after I was born," Ziva told him. "He came home from a mission, and told her to pack a bag. She thought that we were going to the farmhouse, but my father drove in the opposite direction."

"Can we go to the farmhouse?" he asked.

"Maybe," she said with a shrug. She tasted fresh olives in her mouth. "Eventually we arrived in Haifa, and my father took her to this house, and showed her the papers that said it was hers. She was very excited. She always said it was the best thing he ever gave her, except for Tali and I of course."

A dark voice in Tony's head, wondered if Eli had darker motives, but he let that thought fizzle out.

"How many times did she told you that story?" he asked.

"Only every time we drove up here," she said with a smile. "We liked to hear about this other side of him. He got so distant."

That story could almost banish the pain of another missed recital and another empty seat at birthday party. The two David daughters, could almost believe that their father was a kind man with an incredible unfathomable responsibility. They could almost excuse his absence. Almost.

"Sometimes," he said. "I think she mostly just recycled movie plots."

Ziva smiled.

"So your mom liked up here," Tony uttered. She listed to how he said Mom, would her as-of-yet theoretical American children call her that. _Mommy, Mommy, Mom_ , chanted in her head.

"She loved it," Ziva declared, a grin spreading across her face. "People always used to say Eilat was a better beach, but she always insisted that Haifa was the best beach in all of Israel."

He hoped she'd take him to Eilat, so he could compare, for himself.

"So she was stubborn," he asked. "Like you?"

"I am not _that_ stubborn," she declared, as her eyes pointed daggers at him.

"So you admit that you're stubborn," he replied.

How many times had she try to explain it to Tony, and to the others. She did not chose to be this stubborn. She had to be like this. She had to stand her ground. She had to fight, because was alone in her corner. Nobody had ever fought for her, and she could not expect anyone to fight for her.

"My mother was what some might call opinionated," she declared. He raised his eyebrows.

"Like mother, like daughter," he muttered. "What was she so opinionated about?"

"Pop music," Ziva declared. "Despite everything that was happening, and everything she knew from her books and from her talks with Schmeil. She was the most opinionated about pop music. And she could barely sing."

He laughed. Tali's soprano voice must have came from Eli's side of the family, he thought.

"What kind of music did she like?" he asked. "Anything I'd recognise."

"She always had music playing," Ziva told him. "She used to keep a box of cassette tapes in the car. She said she played music in English to help Tali and I learn it without an accent. Her favourite tape, had a few Abba songs on it."

He hummed Dancing Queen under his breath.

For a second she had a vision of her mother twenty years older than she ever got to be, standing in a kitchen. Not just any kitchen, the cosy kitchen in Ziva's condo. Her mother was happy singing and cooking. She could just imagine Tony presenting her with flowers, and letting her dote on him. She could almost picture him flirting with her, that way he always did with older women. Would they have sung Waterloo together slightly off-key, while Ziva tried to hold back giggles?

"What kind of music did your mother like?" she asked. He stopped mid-song, and looked up at her. She watched as his mind searched, for an answer.

"You know I don't really remember," he finally said. "Sometimes my memories of her, aren't so good."

She parted the sea of tea cups, and reached for his hands.

"Sorry," she mumbled. "I should not have."

A guilt stewed in her gut. How fair was it to ask him that? He had been so much younger than her, when he became a half-orphan. A silver-tier orphan status they had once joked on a long stakeout, while the radio played adverts for an upcoming mother's day. Her fourteen seemed positively ancient to his eight, but both were too young to be watching dirt being thrown onto newly dug graves.

"No," he whispered. "I should talk about her more. We DiNozzo's have adopted the mantra of not talking about her, of not talking about a lot of important things."

"The David's have lived by a similar party line," she gulped. A realization washed over her, her family no longer operated in plural.

"We should talk about things," he declared. "This past week, it's been good talking about things."

She had held back on the stories at first. Telling him the easy ones first; showing him places she had once been, in another lifetime. She had worried that the weight of her stories, would send him running. Yet, he hadn't. He had simply pulled her close, as if he was trying to absorb her hurt.

After that bus ride, where she told him all about Tali, he had simply listened. Then when they stood on the side of the road, he had held her tight, telling her her was proud. The next morning, she had been so sure, she would find him gone. Instead, he was right next to her, his arm resting on her hip.

"Yes," she replied.

"Must have been hard coming back here, after your mom died," he muttered.

"We did not for years," Ziva replied. "My parents had not finalised their divorce when my mother died, so my father got this house. Tali always wanted to come here for the summers, but Aunt Nettie always came up with an excuse. Finally, just before I was to start with the army, we came up for a week."

"How was that?" he asked.

"Hard," she sighed. "When my mother was alive we used to spend a lot of time in this house, especially in the evenings. Tali was the only one who could stay inside. Nettie and I, we felt so suffocated by this place."

He grazed her knuckle, with his thumb.

"Was that the last time you came here?" he asked.

"Michael brought me here, once," she told him. That same summer, Tony had been in the middle of the ocean.

"Michael Rivkin," he choked, the name tasted bitter on his tongue. Another ghost joined them around the table, it was getting crowded..

"Yes," she told him. "My father must have told him about the house. He must have thought it would be a good surprise."

Michael's expectant eyes, as he turned the key in the door. The ghosts leapt out from their hiding places. He promised her new memories to be made in the house. In the end it got too much for Ziva. While, Michael lay sleeping, she played with the fuse box, and insisted they spend the rest of their trip in a fancy hotel,not an old rickety house. A rickety old house, with its memories that threatened to drag her under.

"Was it?" Tony asked.

"I was very conflicted then," Ziva told him. "I loved my new life in America, but I also wanted to believe I had something for me in Israel. I should have listened to Aunt Nettie."

Since she could remember, her father had told her the story of Israel. The deserts and the swamps, that were transformed by Jews who believed in a promised land. A land where people who had escaped Hitler's death marches could finally walk free, even if they were still haunted. Where Jews from Arab countries were sent to. She had been told, since she was old enough to walk, that she must defend this land. _All our neighbors want us dead Ziva,_ Eli had told her as they stood in the Golan Heights meters away from the signs carrying warnings of mines in multiple languages. She had been so surprised how easily, she could walk away from it all. How she had adjusted to seeing eighteen year olds where football jerseys and backpacks, not olive green and uzis.

"Nettie did not like Rivkin?" Tony asked.

"She said Zivaleh, is this man trying to woo you, our your father?" Ziva told him, mocking her Aunt's heavy accent.

"Sounds like a wise woman," he uttered, with a chuckle. "We gonna meet her on this Israeli adventure."

"She died," Ziva whispered her voice cracking.

"When?" he asked.

"That summer," Ziva uttered. "When you thought I was dead."

His face dropped. That summer they did not talk about. That summer he had barely made it through.

"I was told it was a stroke in her sleep," Ziva said quickly.

"You think it was something else," he whispered.

"I think she just gave up," Ziva told him. "She lost a lot in her life. Too much."

He swallowed thickly.

"Her father died when she was still in school. Her first fiance in the Yom Kippur War. Another finance never came after the first Lebanon War," Ziva uttered, a tear fell down her face, grieving for her Aunt losses. "Within five years of each other, she had lost her sister and her niece, both so suddenly and so horribly. Then she thought she lost me. Schmeil told me that they really believed I was dead. It would have been the straw that broke the donkey's back."

"Camel's back," he corrected. "How'd you find out?"

"I tried to call her," Ziva whispered, "after my father sent Malachi to D.C. She and my Father were not really speaking any more, but I knew that he would spin things. I wanted to speak to her first. Even if she never forgave me for walking away from Israel, I wanted to tell her the truth."

He made a noise, and squirmed in his seat.

"I got a message about the number being out of service, so I called Schmeil," Ziva told him. "He told me."

 _You are alive_ , the old man had beamed from across the ocean, _oh Zivaleh we really thought you were lost._

"You know I still owe her flowers," Tony muttered. A flicker of a laugh slipped from Ziva's mouth. The squadroom, him snatching the phone from her. Different times. Innocent times. "I should get her those flowers."

She looked up at him. Confusion knitted into her brows. The grey light was softening, ever so slowly. Soon, it would be morning.

"We can go to her," he spelled out. "So you can say your goodbyes."

"Jews do not put flowers on graves," she told him clinically.

She had memories, hazy ones, of her standing next to her grandmother. Her grandmother was all grey hair and arthritic knees. It was just them, standing in front of a grave. The sun bearing down on their backs. Ziva's tiny fingers wrapped around a stone, placed carefully on the grave of a grandfather she never met. It was only another year or two, before she was instructing tiny handed Tali to do the same, with the fresh grave of their grandmother. It was less than a decade before they stood in front of their mother's new grave, how close together the numbers between birth and death were. Stones placed on all three, because the loss was forever, just like the stones.

"I know that," he said. "But if it's what you need to go to see her, we can do that."

"I will think about it," she said.

She had never really bothered with it before. Perhaps, it was because she had been so far from their graves for all these years. Perhaps because she had been scared of feeling too much, when she was confronted with those slabs of stone.

"Come back to bed," he begged.

The day was close to dawning. They would only be able to catch a few hours under the spell of the sandman, before the heat got too much. Maybe, they would frolic in Haifa's warm waters, just like Tommy and Lisa in McGee's new book.

He got up, leaving the now cold tea on the table. She did too. His hand reached back for hers. Her feet felt unsteady, like a toddler learning to walk. Could all this truth telling be a process of being reborn. Was she going to emerge from the cocoon a new butterfly. A cat with a new life. She must have nearly used her nine lives.

"I cried for her," Ziva said suddenly.

His hand was still out for her, but she reached for the Formica table. Griping it, hoping to keep up right.

"Aunt Nettie?" he asked.

"No," she said, "Well yes, but that is not what I am talking about."

Those sobs into the empty rooms of her new apartment. Those hurried prayers. So much had been lost.

"What are you talking about?" he asked, softly.

He stepped closer, and placed his hand on her shoulders.

"In Somalia," she whispered. She felt the grit of desert sand in between her teeth. Her skin itched. His body wrapped around hers. His hands ran along the ridges of scars, he could feel through her thin shirt. "That was when I knew that what they had done, had broken me. When I cried for my mother."

 _Ima, Ima_ , _Ima_ , she had whimpered in the hot cell. Her body ached. Her soul was broken. These men had taken everything from her. _Ima, Ima_ , I am lost, please come and find me. _Ima_ , make it better please. _Ima, Ima, Ima_.

"They knew," Ziva whispered. "Do remember that time Ducky said that many languages have an Ma sound in the word for mother."

That idle chat that happened in front of a dead body. None of them would remember how the conversation came about, but lecture time with Ducky begun. He had even gotten Ziva to illustrate his point, by saying Mama in all the languages she knew. That conversation had taken place, that first winter after she got back, how her head had swam with resurfaced memories as they drove back to base.

"The beat me harder, after that," she reported. "And they laughed at me. I think that shame of that, hurt worse than the beating."

Did those men not know, that if they were in her shoes, they would cry for their own mothers, even louder?

He sucked in a huge gulp of air. They stood close. Heartbeats synchronizing. He rubbed her back. A sob got muffled by his chest. He waited, for a waterfall of tears, or more sobs, but nothing came. One and done. If Ziva David knew anything, it was that lamenting would not banish the pain, so there was no point crying. He held her tight.

"I've got you," he whispered. She looked back up at him with her big brown eyes. "I got you. You're okay."

She tried to come up with words to refuse him. Her lips opened, but no words came out. He had her, she wasn't okay right now, but she would be. She believed him.

The sun peeked in through the windows. Morning had arrived. Perhaps, the ghosts would stay in the dark. Perhaps when the moon filled the sky next she would not be suffocated by the ghosts.

"Guess we're not going back to bed," he whispered, with a slight smile.

It was already getting warm, and Ziva was seldom able to get to sleep once the sun had risen. He hoped, he could convince her to indulge in an afternoon nap, and possibly other bed-based activities later on.

"We should watch the sunrise," she whispered, sounding younger than she was. "Ima always used to say the Haifa sunrise was the best in Israel, no the best in the world."

He chuckled. Rivka David and her wild opinions again. He led her to the window, but she shook her head.

"Let's watch it from the roof," she said, holding his hand tight. "It really is the best view."

He simply nodded, and followed her lead.

 **A/N** :

Well, look at that two authors notes for the price of one.

Thanks for all the kind words. Thanks even more for putting up with my erratic updates.

I don't own a thing.

And yes, I had to kill Aunt Nettie.


	9. Chapter 9

Dark had enveloped the seaside city of Haifa. Tony and Ziva lay in bed, in the furthest back room of the Haifa beach house, she had once spent her summers in. He had told her he could hear the faint lapping of the sea hitting the shore but she was not convinced. _We're too far away,_ she had told him. _You have to believe, what you have to believe_ , he had responded. Her pessimistic laugh had echoed through the halls where the ghosts roamed.

They were naked in bed. She was laying on her stomach, her elbows digging into the foot of the bed reading a book. A book she had discovered on their morning mission to find fresh sheets. A book that had a pink bookmark sitting in the last quarter. He wondered which of her dead loved one had never quite finished it, after picking it up on a lazy sunny day. The book mark was too pink to have been Ziva's. He had made jokes with her about the content of the book, as it was in Hebrew and the cover was plain. She had laughed again when he suggested it was some bizarre sex romp through the Israeli desert. How he had savoured that laugh, it was so good to hear her laugh.

Her legs were kicking up into the air, and he admired her perfectly toned calves. He admired how from their day in the beach, the sun had painted her a shade darker. The tan spread across her whole bodily, evenly covering every inch that had not been covered by the itty-bitty bikini. He on the other hand, had uneven patches of bronze. And despite how liberally she had applied the sunscreen, a red blistering patch of sunburn was forming underneath his neck. She had kissed that better, softly and sweetly, as they decided to retire to bed early.

The book closed with a slam. She rolled over on the bed, pulling the sheet from under him, and covering her front. _No fair_ , he thought. Her legs stopped moving and she lent them on the bed head.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked, looking up at him. Her eyes locked onto his.

"Ice cream," he joked with a grin. She rolled her eyes. "Do we still have some in the freezer?"

"I am being serious," she pestered. "What are you thinking about?"

He smiled at her, her hands resting on her stomach the book on her chest. She looked young.

"Well," he said dragging out the syllables, and running his hand under the sheet, and up her thigh. "I was thinking I could die here."

He felt like he was in one of those French arthouse movies, the one he always had to watch twice to get the full meaning of.

"You should not joke about that," she said, her eyes getting dark.

He stopped his hand mid-thigh. Despite their pre-dawn conversation the day before, despite her now sleeping through the night, the ghosts still lingered.

He mentally head slapped himself for his choice of words.

"I just meant, that I am happy," he told her. "In this moment, laying here with you, I am happy."

"Happy," she echoed, her lips curved, the word tasted strange.

"Are you not happy?" he asked.

"That is a complicated question," she replied back.

"Didn't you once tell me American's say it's complicated when they don't want to answer the question," he uttered, finding himself remembering a tense conversation had under the stairs at headquarters, under the last administration.

"I am an American now," she uttered, a smirk crossing her lips. And complicated she was.

"Are you happy?" he repeated.

"Like overall?" she asked.

"Right in this moment," he whispered. "Right now."

She paused. Her eyes darted around the room. The wallpaper was fading. The breeze was sifting through the window. He knew so much about her, he had seen her at her worst, but he was still here. Why did he have so much faith in her?

"I think so," she finally said. "I think I am happy."

"Good," he said.

She opened her book again. He watched her flick through the pages, she read in Hebrew far quicker than she read in English. His brain still thought she was reading it backwards. He reached across the bedside table, to Ziva's pile of books. She had found some dusty English books, among the house. Most of them were romance books, which she claimed belonged to her Aunt Nettie, who always wanted to read a happy ending. One of the books was a copy of The Little Drummer Girl, he had laughed when he found it, having seen the movie not long after it came out. Ziva had smiled, and revealed that book had been a joke gift from her mother to her father, still having the note on the inside cover. He suspected that the joke had been one-sided, he couldn't for the life of him picture Eli finding a book about Mossad funny. He cracked open the spine, and read the first page.

"Do you ever think about the future?" she asked, when he was ten pages into the book, which was already shaping up to be better than the movie.

"What do you mean?" he asked, she rested her book folded open on her chest.

"It's just I have been thinking so much about the past," she whispered. "And somebody once told me that time is not linear. The past, the present and the future are mixed up."

"Who told you that?" he asked.

"After Tali died, somebody told me that," she told him. "I think they were trying to be comforting."

She could barely remember who had told her that. Some kid that Tali had known, who she bumped into years later. He'd grown up, gotten older, unlike Tali who was forever sixteen. He had run off to India after his stint in the army he had told her, in crowded Tel Aviv bar, her back aching from the bullet she had dodged in a faraway land. She'd rolled her eyes as he told her of the mysticism of India. Didn't crazy American's say the same thing about Israel? _Maybe, it's like Tali's still here but she's not in this dimension,_ he had told her as he followed out side. He lit up a cigarette which smelt suspiciously unlike tobacco. She had just wanted to come to the bar, and find a warm body for comfort, not ponder the universe. Besides, it didn't matter, whatever dimension Tali might have been in, it did not make her less gone.

"Were they?" he asked.

"I punched him," Ziva told him. "Then I left the bar."

He laughed. A full belly laugh. That was all the answer he needed.

"I believe that past affects the future," Ziva told him. "I think maybe, I need to put some of the past to sleep."

"To bed," he corrected. "What do you want from the future?"

"What do you want?" she asked.

"I asked first," he replied. _Please say me,_ he thought, _please say me_.

"I was thinking about buying a house," Ziva said after a few seconds. "Putting down roots."

"A house?" he echoed. "That's a big expense."

"My father left me some money," she admitted, before blowing out a big breath. A barrel of money could never make up for a lifetime of hurt.

"That explains the new ride," he uttered.

"That was," she paused, her chest heaved. "Frivolous."

"Everyone's allowed to be frivolous sometimes," he told her.

"It is not very practical," Ziva continued. "I do not know how it will run in the winter."

"I tell you what," he said, "I'll buy a practical car, and if your zippy new ride is allergic to snow, we'll use my car. My car can be the workhorse, and yours can be the weekender."

She smiled.

"That is still not practical," she continued.

"Screw practicality," he muttered. "Besides it sounds like you didn't blow all of your inheritance."

She'd barely made a dent in the seemingly endless post of money Eli had left her.

"No," Ziva said. "It turns out my father had become quite the property investor. His lawyer joked that he was why young people cannot afford to buy apartments in Tel Aviv."

"Wow," he muttered. "Guess you're going to be okay if this unplanned sabbatical goes on for a little while."

"We will be okay, Tony," she soothed.

"So what do you want your house to be like?" he asked after a few seconds of quiet.

"I have not given it much thought," she lied.

She had given it too much thought. The images of a little house had begun long ago, before she and Tony, crossed like line from best friends to more than friends. She cursed Ray for talking about a little house in Virginia and a trio of children. She had brought into the American dream, hard. How silly of her to think she deserved nice things?

"Will it have a pool?" he asked. She looked up at him, with a frown.

"A pool is not practical in Virginia," she told him. "They are too expensive to maintain and it is barely ever warm enough for one."

Ziva and her practicality.

"Tell me about your house," he commanded softly.

"It is imaginary," she replied.

"You have to wish it into existence," he told her. "Like the Secret."

"I would like it to be old," she whispered. "To have history and character. The apartment where I grew up was brand new, we were its first owners and I always wanted a house with stories. My mother had a friend who lived in Jerusalem, and his house was old. It had stories. I wanted that."

"You'll probably end up with a reno job," he told her.

"Yes," Ziva swallowed, "But I quite like the idea of that, of doing it up, of making it my own."

"You could probably get Gibbs to help," he told her, "Cut some costs."

"I wouldn't use him," Ziva declared. "He has done enough for me."

"I didn't mean it like that, Little Miss Fix-It," he said. "I just meant it'd be his little project for a while, he'd make sure some contractor doesn't rip you off, and help you paint or something."

"That would be nice," Ziva whispered.

"Probably only have to pay him beer and food," Tony joked. "Hell you could probably turn it into a team project; McTechno would help with all the electronics, and probably connect your fridge to the WI-fi or something crazy like that. Abby would help us paint, and probably try and convince us to paint the bathroom black. Ducky, would research the house, and get all of its history for you."

"I would not impose my house on the others," Ziva said.

"It's what families do," he uttered. "Just like when we helped Palmer and Breena move."

"Still," she continued. "I would never force them to help. We get so little free time."

"Abby would probably turn up dressed like Bob the Builder with a gallon of Caf-Pow in hand, anyway" he told her. "Whether you asked her too or not."

"This is all imaginary," she said.

"Sometimes it's nice to live in the imaginary," he said. "Now that we've got our fix-it crew, what would your house look like."

"I don't know," she said. She moved around on the bed. The book went flying across the room. Her head ended up on his chest, and her legs were hanging on the bed. Her curls tickled under his nose.

"Close your eyes and imagine," he said softly.

She did. Her eyes closed. She pictured an old victorian house, with a stain-glass window like Gibbs' little cottage. She pictured a tree in the front yard. She could hear the faint laughter of children.

"I'd like a big kitchen," Ziva told him. "One with a big island and one of those farmhouse sinks. I'd like big windows, to see out onto a little backyard. Maybe, I could try gardening."

"You're becoming a Nana," he joked. Her eyes were still closed. "What else?"

"Bookshelves, like Schmeil has," she said excitedly. Her eyes still tightly closed, as if like a birthday wish it would never happen if she opened them. "Maybe a whole wall of them."

"You do have a lot of books," he said.

Her Gibbs-made bookshelf was overflowing. Her American history books, with the tabs from when she studied for her American citizenship exam. She had not been content just to learn the questions, instead she had learnt every little bit of information, and could probably right a thesis on all the she knew. Schmeil sent her books fairly regularly too, claiming the books would soothe her soul.

"There would need to be room for DVD's too," she said.

"You own like four dvds," he replied.

He knew this because he had brought every single one of them for her. She owned The Sound of Music, and the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Each had been played a dozen times. He could almost forget she was an ex-assassin when she sung along to _these are a few of my favourite things_.

"No, but you do," she said.

His throat went dry. She planned a future with him in it.

"I'm not giving you my DVDs," he uttered, giving her an out.

Her eyes fluttered open. Sleeping beauty awoken from her spell.

"I know this has not been going on long," she said, as she waved her hand between the two of them. "But when I see my future, I see it with you. I am not saying that I want to buy a house straight away. And, I know that the future can change in an instant. I am just saying that I see a future with us."

That's why she had to unearth the past, show off the ugly bits, and pray that he'd get it.

"I do too," he said, in a voice barely above a whisper. He ran his hand over his face, and sucked in a deep breath. "It's just."

"Hard," she interrupted. They might have let down their walls to let the other in, but they needed to build walls around the pair of them, and build them quickly because crap could tumble down on them.

"Yeah," he replied. "But you're worth it. I'd fight for you."

Breath heaved in and out of her. Nobody had ever said she was worth it. She had always just been a tool, a sharp end of the spear. She was worth nothing more than her contribution to the cause.

"I'd fight for you too," she replied, her eyes watery. "It is us versus the world, yes?"

"Yeah it is," he whispered. She patted his chest.

Silence stewed again. She lay on his chest, her ear listening to his heart beat. Neither reached for their books.

"What do you want from life?" she asked. She looked at him, eyes piercing.

"That's a big question," he gulped.

"We have been talking about what I want," she whispered. "But not what you want. Maybe our futures won't align."

Their fates had long been entangled in one another. The universe would have to be cruel master to untangle them now.

"I used to think I wanted my life to be a James Bond movie," he told her. "You know, fast cars, fast women and lots of adventure."

"But," she uttered.

"I want it to be more like the end of It's A Wonderful Life," he told her. "I want all the normal stuff."

"All the normal stuff?" she echoed.

"You know; a house, a wife, and a couple of rugrats," he told her.

"You are scared of children," she said.

Had it not been a few months ago, when they stood in for Mary Poppins with the Vance children. He had taken so long to warm to them, but before they knew it he was pretending to be shark, with a pizza box, and those children had laughed. Laughed for the first time in months.

"I heard it's different when their your own," he told her.

"You have thought about this a lot," she uttered.

"Had a lot of time to think over the past few years," he replied. "Been trying to figure out what I really want."

 _You're just growing up_ , she had once told him in the observation room, after a period of uncharacteristic seriousness. She'd been right, some lessons were harder to learn than others.

"What do you really want?" she asked.

"A couple of kids, and a job that means I don't miss their whole lives," he finally said. "Both are strictly imaginary at this point."

A pair of kids, with his nose above her lips, and her dark eyes. _Daddy, Daddy, Dad._

"You'd change your job if you had children," she asked, trying to hide the surprise that laced her voice.

"Yeah," he said. "Gibbs and I talked once. Well I talked and he grunted. I figured out I'm an all kinda guy. I can't evenly fill two cups. I've given 1000% to my job, but if I had kids I'd want to give it all to them. I'd want to be there for every little league game, every dance recital. Every dinner time."

She sucked in a deep breath. How many dance recitals had she scanned the faces of proud parents, only to find her father's seat empty? How many dinners had she stared at her father's empty seat?

"But you love your job," she uttered.

"If I had kids, they'd mean more," he continued. "I know there are people who manage both. I know there are people who don't have a choice. When I was on the Reagan there was this guy who would read bedtime stories to his kid on tape send 'em home. Some of his bunk mates even got in on it, and did all these cool voices, but it was just a band-aid solution. The guy wanted to be there with his kid."

She was quiet again. Her eyes were looking down at his chest. Had her father ever wished he was reading bedtime stories, instead of fighting the monsters far scarier than the ones that his children imagined? Had his father ever wished he had been there to kiss his son goodnight, instead of playing with other people's imaginary money?

"It might be hard," Ziva whispered.

"What might be hard?" he asked.

"For me to have children," she said quickly. He wanted this so much. What if she could not give it to him?

He swallowed thickly.

"There was an infection," she uttered, "And a delay in treatment. The doctors said they would not know the extent of the damage for sure, unless I actually started trying."

He wrapped his arms around her, trying to protect her from the ghosts that blew in from across the sea. He wondered did this hurt more than the scars that lined her back?

"Sorry," he whispered into her curls.

"The doctors said there are lots of ways to make a family," she uttered.

She could remember the pile of leaflets the well-meaning doctor had given her with multiracial families, and smiling children in loving parents arms. She had shoved them into a draw, and tried to pretend she had never wanted children. Then Ray with all his crap about the CIA being his job but not his life, had offered her the future. He whispered dreams into her head. She thought of a pair of dark haired kids, speaking Spanish, Hebrew and English and getting confused by all the holidays. How their multi-cultural multi-lingual offspring would anger rednecks in the supermarket the two of them had joked.

He remembered that photo of her, the one they'd found from the pregnancy pact case. A group of female enlisted personnel all from the same ship, who were going to have babies and raise them together. He remembered how she had looked so content, stroking the fake bump. He thought of years before, when they were playing married assassins how she'd asked him not to imagine her pregnant. Was nothing ever easy for her.

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it," he told her. "We'll find a way to have our picket fence and our 2.5 kids."

"How do you have point five of a child?" she asked.

"I think the point five is a dog," he joked. He could picture it now; Tony, Ziva, their creepy old house, their two kids, and their dog. Who'd have thought they'd want to be so damn normal.

"I like dogs," she whispered. A smile on her face.

"I know," he half-laughed. "I know."

 **A/N** :

I don't own a thing.

Thanks for all the reviews, and love.

I'm also not very sure about this chapter. Maybe, this where it all veers too AU, and too out of character. If you've gotta jump the shark at this point, thanks for hanging about.

It's not like I've rushed the chapter either. It's had a long time to stew, as it's been a four day weekend here, and I hurt my feet trying to break in a pair of Doc Martens. So I've had a lot of time to sit on my behind, and play with this story.

So yeah, feedback and discussion very welcome.

Now onto the references.

The Little Drummer Girl, was written in the eighties by John Le Carre, now I read it when I was in high school, it's about Israeli spies, and an English actress who got involved with them. It was made into a movie not long after the book, but Charlie became American played by Diane Keaton. I've not seen the movie, because it's too hard to source. The eighties were a bit before my time. The book was also referenced in Amos Oz's To Know A Woman, which I read ages ago too. It wasn't referenced by name, but the main character who is a retired and recently widowed Mossad officer, makes allusions to that book making its way around the office, in the same way McGee's book did in NCIS.

The thing about the past, present and future all being jumbled up and non-linear is something Nick Cave said in his recent documentary _One More Time With Feeling_ , where he talks about his new album and the death of his teenage son. He talks about how people said that too him, and he thought it was BS. Bonus fact: The title of this story, is also from one of Nick Cave's songs _To Be By Your Side_ , which was used on a French documentary about birds.


	10. Chapter 10

It was hot. The sun bore down on them. His bare wrist accidentally touched the back seat of the car as he reached over to grab the snacks, and he found himself yelping. He took a swig of water, and found himself swilling the warm liquid in his mouth, hardly refreshing.

They were somewhere in the middle of the desert, it had been a long time since he had seen anything resembling a town. Ziva had been taking him to see something, a Kibbutz that her Uncle used to live on, or something like that. They were driving, when her phone rang. She ignored it, but it kept ringing. Then it rung again. And again. She had finally pulled over, jumped out of the car and taken the call.

It seemed that were stopped at popular picnic spot. Somewhere in the distance, a group of young people were cooking something that resembled a barbeque. He found himself licking his lips, despite the feast of food in the backseat of the car, he wanted Israeli grill now.

Ziva was still on the phone, pacing in front of the car, uttering the occasional exasperated Hebrew. He'd known her long enough to know when she was swearing. He popped a cherry tomato in his mouth. She kicked a big pile of sand and got in the car. The door slammed. Loudly. The car shook.

"Well this isn't about my eating the last boureka," he muttered as she sat in the driver's seat. He plopped a tahini cookie in his mouth, stress eating for both of them. Her face spelled doom.

"That was Orli," she finally said, with a dramatic huff.

 _Oh that's right, they we're in a tiny bit of danger,_ he thought darkly.

"What did she want?" he asked, as he plopped another cookie in his mouth.

"There was an explosion," she said. "Last week. She thought we should know."

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. His heart tried to jump out of his chest. The cookie tasted suddenly dry in his mouth, like he was eating dust. It had only been just over a year since the Navy Yard was attacked. Since they were stuck in that elevator, for hours, not knowing who among their friends might be alive or dead. So much had changed since then. So much.

"Where?" he managed to choke out, mouth full. He was trying not to catastrophize, things exploded in Israel, all the time he thought again. Orli was after all the director of Mossad.

"Washington," she whispered. "The SecNav was killed, and Tom Morrow from Homeland was injured."

"Anyone else we know?" he asked. Please let McGee be okay, he silently prayed. Please let Gibbs be safe.

"No," she said, as she reached across him and took a cherry tomato. She squeezed it hard, before she put it in her mouth.

"Did she know what Morrow's condition?" he asked.

"I did not ask," she said softly. "I did not have time for chit-chap."

He nodded, too busy digesting the news to correct her english. He could not blame her for not checking on Morrow, he'd been director before her time, and he had been pretty keen on putting an end to her little vengeance mission.

"It's not the SecNav that's got you all pissed off," he muttered, as a frown etched itself on her face.

"I am not pissed off," she replied. Liar, he wanted to say, but refrained.

"You kicked sand, like a camel," he replied, as he caught her eyes in the rearview mirror. Her dark eyes flitted nervously.

"I am fine," she said, in that tone which meant the opposite.

He sighed. They'd been doing so well. They had both been pulling down the walls, and let the other in. Secrets had been told. Stories shared. Now, it felt like he was kicking at a barrier. One step forward, two steps back.

"Is Orli still offering us the Mossad safehouse?" he asked.

"Yes," Ziva said, "But that is not what is pissing me off."

He nodded, glad for a crack, something to grip onto and open her up.

"What's pissing you off?" he asked again.

"Her," Ziva said softly, before turning her head away. Her curls falling in front of her eyes.

"Orli?" he asked.

"Yes," Ziva said, turning her head back to him. "Adam could have told us about the SecNav, but she made the call. She is the director of Mossad, we are small fly to her."

Again her English went uncorrected. It always seemed to get more confused when she was pissed off.

"Vance probably told her, and she told us," he offered. "She's just passing on the message."

"We are not Agents anymore," she breathed. "He has no reason to be concerned for our well-being."

"You and I both know that it's more complicated than that," he uttered. How quickly Ziva forgot that she and Vance were forever bound by shared tragedy. "And we'll be back at work soon enough."

"It is not just that," Ziva uttered.

"Look I get it, you don't like Orli because she slept with your Dad back in the day," he hissed, trying not to shout. "But this thirteen going on thirty act is wearing just a little thin."

She blinked back at him. Two careful calculated blinks. That had hurt. More than any gun shot, or fist pounded into her skin.

"You don't get it," Ziva uttered coldly. Would he ever get it? Was just telling him these stories, and he nodding along because he liked how she looked in a dress.

"You think Senior wasn't chasing after everything in a skirt," Tony uttered, holding his hands up. "You think I didn't resent the poor women that caught in his spell. At least your Dad was smart enough not to marry Orli."

At least Orli was smart enough to leave, before that had ever become an option.

"At least he waited until your mother had died before he started screwing the town," she shouted back.

He wanted to correct her, but her description felt apt.

"She cares, Ziva," he said, offering a softer voice, hoping to defuse her angry one. There might be danger lurking, their domestic could wait. "Let her care."

"She does not care," Ziva hissed.

"Fine she's doing this because Vance is on her ass," he uttered holding up his hands, in defeat. "Or because she thinks she has to, because of who your father was, but you can't be this angry. Not because of her."

"So, I cannot be angry," Ziva erupted. So much for stoking the fire.

"This anger cannot be healthy," he whispered. "I thought you were trying to let go of the past."

"This isn't your movies," she shouted. "Things do not get resolved in ninety minutes."

His patience was wearing thin. He ran his hands over his face. A sigh escaped his lips, and he slouched into his seat.

"I know that," he said his voice not more than a long sigh. "I just thought we were talking about things."

She blinked again. Slowly and deliberately. He watched through the mirror. A tear ran down her cheek.

"I am sorry, Tony," she whispered, as she slipped deeper into her seat. "This has been hard."

"I know," he whispered, as he took her hand, and held it in hers.

"I know I should not be angry with her," Ziva said swallowing thickly. The single tear remained orphan, but her eyes bulged, more were waiting to deploy. "I know that I should be angry with him."

"Your Dad," he uttered softly. It was so much easier to be angry with the living.

"He was the one who left all the time," Ziva whispered, her eyes glassed over. "He was the one who decided to cheat on my mother."

"You were a kid," he told her softly.

"I was not a child," Ziva told him, looking exactly like a pre-teen trying to tell the world they were a fully fledged grown-up. "We had celebrated my Bat Mitzvah just before."

He laughed. A half laugh, that he tried to stifle.

"You were a kid," he repeated. "You were allowed to be angry at whoever you wanted."

"I was angry with my mother too," she said, with a gulp. "I was so angry with her. It was like I thought that she had somehow made him stray. I wanted somebody to blame, but it should not have been her."

"You were a kid," he repeated. An angry, confused, and lost kid.

"We had such horrible fights," Ziva uttered. "Horrible, horrible fights."

Mother and daughter spewing horrible words at each other. Doors slamming. _You have taken my father from me_ , she screamed as she slammed the door. _Oh Ziva, if only you knew_ , her mother whispered from the other side.

"I think every teenage girl fights with their mom," he uttered. "Remember all the stories McGee told us about the McSister as a teenager."

"Stop," Ziva uttered. "Stop trying to justify my actions. I did horrible things without reason. I do not get a get out of jail free card."

He was very impressed by her monopoly reference.

"Ziva you were a kid," he continued, still keeping his tone low. "Your Dad took up with someone else. You were allowed to be angry."

"Tali was not angry," she whispered, her eyes still glassy. "She simply took it all in stride. I used to accuse her of not caring. She nine. She was a child. I was older I should have known better."

Tali's sobs echoing through the apartment. Their mother's comforting words sifting through the hallway. Ziva trying to banish her own tears, as she stared at the closed door. She had ruined it. She had ruined everything. She was no good. Maybe, it wasn't her mother's or Tali's fault that her father left, maybe it was hers.

"Ziva," he said softly, trying to coax her back into the present.

"I was horrible," she continued. "I was horrible. I was horrible to Tali. I was horrible to Orli. I was horrible to my mother. I should have been horrible to him."

"You loved him," he uttered.

"But why," she whispered.

"He was your Dad," he told her. The words tasted like salt in his mouth. Never, in a million zillion years did he think he would be defending Eli David.

"I kept forgiving him," Ziva whispered. "Kept letting him back in."

He let out a breath slowly, knowing this wasn't just about when she was kid. Some wounds were more recent. Eli had never seen that look she wore when they brought her back from Africa. How haunted she was. Eli had never seen her, when the past and present got tangled up, and she thought she was still in that hell hole. He had never seen her when nightmares made her afraid of what lingered in the dark.

"Families are complicated," he whispered. All happy families, are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

"Look at where it left me," she whispered. "He is dead, and I am just an angry woman."

"That's not all you that you are," he whispered. She was Ziva David, she was never just anything.

"Yes it is," she told him. "This me. I am just some angry woman who cannot let go of the past. This is what you are dealing with Tony."

"That's not true," he uttered. "That's not even the tiniest bit true."

"I am still angry with Orli, over something from long ago," she told him. "I hunted Ilan Bodnar like he was prey, because he killed my father. Yet, in my father's final days Ilan probably had more of his confidences. Then there is Ari."

Despite the blazing sun outside, the car suddenly felt cold. Tony thought of Kate lying in autopsy a bullet through her head. Of Ari's piercing eyes on the grainy picture from autopsy. Of Ziva calmly revealing to the team that Ari had been her half-brother during that summer Gibbs' was sipping corona's with Franks. She had stood there in autopsy biting her lip, as the others digested the news. She had been waiting for them to send her away. To start screaming. Instead Abby, of all people, had engulfed Ziva in a huge hug.

"What about all the good you do?" he asked, trying to turn the tide. "You do so much good."

"Where?" she cried. Where was this good she was doing?

"At work," he uttered. "You do so much good there."

"I am a part of the team because of my languages, and my skills with a weapon," Ziva told him flatly.

"And your empathy," he told her. "And your persistence, you never stop until you get to the truth."

She blinked at him. She wasn't getting it.

"Don't you remember that Lebanese family who were seeking asylum," he uttered. "We were investigating them, and you made sure they had fresh food."

"Ships are not abundant with fresh food," Ziva told him. "They must have gone so long without fresh food."

Her voice had that softness, that it did when she was speaking from experience.

"See," he uttered. "And the rape case a few years back. That Petty Officer finally felt safe enough to open up, when you were there.."

"That was personal," Ziva said, looking down at her lap.

He mentally, slapped himself for bringing that part of her past, into into the conversation. Her piercing eyes, had been on his mind for days after that.

"Exactly," he continued. "Even though it was personal, you still remained professional. Are you not getting this, because I can give you dozens of examples."

"I was doing my job," she hit back. "That is all."

"You were going above and beyond," he told her. "You are valuable not just because of what you do at work, but because of who you are."

"I am a valuable asset to NCIS, yes," she said.

"Yeah," he said, "But you're so valuable to us."

"Us?" she said her head tipped up.

"Me, Abby, McGee, Gibbs, Duckman," he continued. "You are so valuable."

God, she was so valuable to him.

"How?" she uttered.

"How," he echoed, "Shall I list the ways?"

She looked at him, with a serious look.

"You make us laugh," he whispered, offering out his thumb to illustrate your point. "That's one."

"With my English mistakes," she uttered. Of course they would laugh at her failures.

"Yeah, sometimes," he told her, "And that time you tried to tell us it was called horse whispering because horses have sensitive hearing. That thing you do, when you get super excited about something, and give McGeek a run for his money in the nerd olympics. That is just so damn cute."

A hint of a smile dawned over her face. He was getting somewhere.

"You're the only one Ducky trusts with teapot." he cried out, hoping to hammer his point home.

"American's cannot make tea," she declared. "Especially Jimmy."

He smirked, remembering many of Ducky's rants about Jimmy's attempts at making tea. The kid did everything right on paper, but did not have the heart. He did not understand the ceremony of the tea.

"Schmeil loves you," he uttered. "You should have seen it. his whole face lit up when he saw you."

"He has known me since I was three," she replied.

"And he loves thirty year old Ziva as much as three year old Ziva," he countered. "You don't see it."

"See what?" she asked.

"You don't see that McGee adores you, Abby loves you, and you and Gibbs have that weird thing where you just get each other," he whispered. "We love you. We love you so much."

She tried to offer rebuttals and he lovingly placed his finger on her lips.

"I don't know who told you that you are only as valuable as your skills with a gun," he said. "But they're wrong. You are valuable, just because of who you are."

"Tony," she wavered, fighting free from his finger. "Please."

Please don't lie to me she was asking. So many people had lied to her. Michael, Ray, her father, had all spun such lies, and she had gotten caught in their webs. The biggest lie of all being _I love you_.

"I'm telling the truth," he kept going. "I'm gonna keep saying this until you believe it. I don't care if I have to tell you every day for the next fifty years."

Stop resisting. Lay down your guns. Waive your white flag. Undo all that she had been conditioned to believe. If only it was as easy as his smile made it out to be.

A tear fell down her face. Then another. The tears kept falling. Her nose sniffed. A sob heaved through her chest. She swallowed thickly.

"The crying was not the desired effect," he muttered.

She laughed. A snotty tearful laugh. Her eyes lit up.

"Why do you put up with me?" she asked.

He scoffed. How could she ask him that? They fit, they just fit. It's like he told her, and everyone else, he couldn't live without her.

"Cause you're worth it," he finally said with a smile.

She looked down at her lap.

"And I know that it's hard now, but one day it'll be less hard," he said, before she could offer another rebuttal.

"And then we will have a happy life," she whispered.

That old house, with walls of shelves, and a big kitchen. A dog jumping up to greet them as they came home. Children laughing. Could all of that be in reach for them?

"I was kinda hoping we could have a happy life now," he muttered. Sitting with her curled up next to him, watching a movie. Her curls across his chest. His arm going numb, as she fell asleep during the best part."Or at least try too."

"But it is hard," she whispered. It was so hard.

"Hard, messy and complicated," he uttered with another smile. "When have we ever been anything else?"

She placed her finger under her nose to try to banish some of the snot, and laughed again. More tears fell.

"You are a good man," she whispered. "Such a good man."

He scoffed; people kept telling him that, and he was no closer to believing it.

"I've done horrible things too," he told her.

"Like what?" she asked.

"I've been horrible to women," he uttered.

Once upon a time, a woman had said she loved how he did not lie about things, not even the little things, when he admitted he had not yet brought her a Valentine's Day gift. Little did she know, he was lying to her about everything, even his name. How those words had haunted him for weeks, keeping him up late, and disturbing his dreams. He might have been under orders from a fiery-haired director, and that woman an arms dealer's daughter, but the deception ate away at him.

"I know I've gone too far with McGee," he uttered. "Must have really hurt him a few times. Probably made his therapist a ton of money."

"The things you have done," Ziva whispered. "They do not make you a bad person."

We are so much kinder to others, than we are to ourselves, he heard a voice that sounded like Ducky in his head.

"Shall we bottle your pep talk, and have you take a swig?" he uttered.

"The things I have done," she whispered, holding out her hands. He took them and he pulled her close. The car was cramped, but he needed to hold her. The gear shift banged his knee. "I have done such horrible things."

Ari's body slamming onto Gibbs' floor. Ilan being flung overboard to his death. The men who died by her hand, there were too many to count. The destruction she caused was endless.

"You had to do them," he told her. "And whatever they are, nobody thinks you are a bad person because you did them."

"I do not believe that," she uttered honestly.

She pressed her forehead into his. Rolling it around. Why did he insist on dressing up her actions, attaching morality to it all. He was so American in that respect, wanting a good guy and a bad guy. Yet no matter what she told him, he always believed her to be the good guy. Did he not understand she had killed people? She killed people, in anger, in vengeance, and in cold blood.

"Please try," he whispered. "Please don't let this eat at you. You are more than the things you had to do to survive. So much more."

 **A/N** :

Thanks for the kind words and general love.

I own nothing.

Any extra grammar mistakes, are due to the cold and flu meds, running through my system, it's autumn down here at the bottom of the world.

Did I skim through two Israeli cookbooks for the two food items mentioned here? Yes, I did. Thank the book gods for Overdrive. They were: Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking by Michael Solomonov and Jerusalem: A Cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi. I don't even cook, but now I know about twenty different recipes involving eggplant.

Also, side note/rant. I really don't believe Eli danced with his daughter, after his wife told him to pack his trash. I do chose to interpret those flashback scenes of S10 as sort of dream-memories. I could probably rant to the high heaven about this. But I won't.


	11. Chapter 11

June had slipped into July without comment from either of them. Tony had not even realised until he saw coverage of Fourth of July fireworks on a television in a cafe. His birthday was in a couple of days, but like the birthdays of years past he expected it to pass without comment.

The heat had continued to rise, and Ziva still seemed unfazed by it. Sometimes, he asked her what the radio reported as temperature but she relayed it in celsius, which he never quite managed to convert correctly. McGee had tried to show him how to do it, on his phone once, but he still had no idea.

They had spent over a week playing tourists, and laying low. Ziva had shown him ancient fort Masada, and he had made no less than three Indiana Jones references. She had taken him to the Dead Sea, and they had floated in it, along with a tour bus full of wrinkly American tourists. They had flown down to Eilat, and he had found that Rivka David had been wrong about Haifa being the better beach, not that he had told Ziva that.

Now, they were in Jerusalem. They had come to the ancient city with Schmeil, who was giving an evening lecture at one of the museums, despite his retirement. An afternoon with Schmeil that man of steel, he had decided was always a treat. Schmeil, seemed to have a connection or old friend everywhere he turned, and they had gotten a guided tour of the museum, and he had watched with glee as Ziva geeked out.

Schmeil was giving a lecture, which he had offered to sit through, despite his knowledge of Hebrew not extending much beyond swear words and greetings, but she had brought him up to the rooftop terrace of the museum. It was just them on the sun soaked terrace. Ziva had leaned into him, pointing out sights, and marvelling at the rich sunset.

"Ari always liked Jerusalem," Ziva said, as she leaned onto his shoulder. She was wearing that dress again, the one he could see down her shirt.

Tony's mouth went dry, at the mention of Ari. Ari killed Kate. Ari killed Kate. Ari killed Kate, echoed in his head, not that he needed reminding.

"This is the first time you've really mentioned him, since we've been here," he muttered, as he managed to produce saliva again.

"It is not the first time I have thought of him," she said swallowing thickly.

How could she not think of him? When she had shown Tony the fort of Masada and remembered the two of them racing around the ancient ruins. When she had shown Tony, Tali's grave, she had thought of the two siblings standing over the freshly dug grave, completely at a loss as to what to say.

"Of course," he said, as he placed a hand on her forearm. "You know you can talk about him. If that's what you need to do."

"What am I supposed to say?" she said, her eyes glassy. Regret pulsed through her, how could she even mention Ari's name, after all he had taken from Tony and the others. "He hurt so many people."

"I was there, I know," he said, biting down on the anger that wanted to unravel. "But I don't want you to feel like you have to censor yourself about him, because of what he did. I want to know everything about you, and he was a part of your life."

"You are sure about this?" Ziva asked. "This cannot be easy."

It was killing him inside.

"Honestly, it's' a little weird," he admitted. "But it's okay, tell me."

"Ari used to say that as an adult he never felt completely at home in Israel," Ziva whispered, "But he felt slightly better in Jerusalem."

Half-brother. Half-Jew. Half-Arab. Those halves never made a whole. Not then anyway.

"Tell me more," he begged.

"Tony," she said softly. "I do not expect you to be Saint Tony about this. He killed your friend."

"He was the saint of lost things," he said.

"What?" she asked, cocking her head.

"Saint Anthony of Padua was the Saint of lost things," he told her. "He's the only one I remember from Catholic school because well we share a name."

Maybe, he was her Saint Anthony, because sometimes she was so lost.

"I know," she whispered.

"How do you know about Saints?" he asked. "Didn't think Hebrew school covered saints."

"Ducky told me," Ziva said with a smile.

"They went to the same medical school, didn't they?" Tony found himself saying, before is brain could rein in his mouth. "Ari and Ducky, I mean."

"Yes," Ziva said, with a nod. "Many decades apart of course."

"Must have been hard, him being so far away," Tony continued.

"Stop," she said looking him square in the eyes. "Stop trying to get me to open up about him. This must be killing you."

"I will let you know if it gets too much," he assured her. "But I want you to know that you can talk about him with me. If this is something you need to do, I'll do this with you."

"He killed your friend, he terrorised the team, he maimed Ducky's assistant," Ziva cried, listing her brother's sins, as they burnt in her mouth, "I don't expect you to listen while I reminisce about him like I do Tali and my parents. I am not going to hurt you like this. I am giving you an out, please take it."

"I'll make a deal with you," he muttered, "You tell me all of your stories, anything you want about him. If it gets too much, I'll tell you. We can make up a safeword."

"A safeword?" she said with her eyebrows raised. "English might not be my first language, but I thought couples usually had safewords for a situation that involves less clothes."

He smirked back.

"Well we just need to make sure we have different safewords for these very different situations," he told her. "In this situation I think the safeword should be Billy Zane."

"Billy Zane," she repeated with her head cocked. "I hope you are more creative safeword, when we use it in the other situations."

"I am always more creative when you're wearing less clothes," he muttered. In reality it was quite the opposite.

"Yes," she drawled sarcastically, before nodding over-enthusiastically. "Of course you are."

"Now that we've got our safeword," he muttered running his hand up and down her forearm. "Feel free to talk."

"To answer your question," she said with a huff. "Tali and I did miss him very much, when he was Edinburgh, but he sent us lots of presents. Big boxes of presents."

The boxes with stamps from a faraway land. The biscuit- cake hybrids called Jaffa Cakes, named after the oranges that Ari missed so much. The books, how the sisters raced to improve their English enough to be able to read them, without consulting their dictionaries.

"That is how I was introduced to Harry Potter," she reported.

"That's very McGeekish of your Ziva David," he cried out.

"It was meant for Tali's birthday, but I told her English was not good enough to read it," Ziva told him. "In the end I started reading it to her. After I have devoured it myself."

"What else do you remember, Little Miss Bookworm?" he asked.

"When he and my father were together," Ziva paused, suddenly feeling a chill roll through her body. "It was always difficult. I do not think they ever saw eyes to eyes."

"Eye to eye," he corrected.

"But we have two eyes," she uttered. "That does not make any sense."

"Unless you're Trent Kort," he smirked.

"That is cruel," Ziva declared.

"He. Blew. Up. My Car." he said slowly. "I don't make the rules, I just correct you when you don't follow them."

"Idioms follow no rules," she told him.

"Tell me more about your brother," he whispered.

"I know you want me to say that as a child he was innocent, and that this is all my father's fault. That is how this would go in your movies, yes?" Ziva uttered, as she bit her lip.

"I know it's complicated," he muttered.

"He was only there sometimes. He was so much older than us. He was already thirteen when Tali was born. When was saw him as children, it was like seeing a cousin," Ziva reported. "I loved him, but there was always this darkness in him. This part of him. My mother told me once, that she found him creepy."

"Did they not get along?" he asked.

"She tried her best," Ziva told him. "But Ari was one of those things my father threw at her. She had enough in her bowl."

"On her plate," he corrected. "You know, you've really reverted, since you've been back here."

She glared at him. Then looked down at her lap.

"When my mother died, he was around more often," Ziva continued. "We became closer then, maybe because he was around more, maybe because we have more in common because I was older. That's when he started to feel like my brother. When Tali died, I became more attached to him, I could not lose him as well."

His chest heaved. He sucked in a deep breath.

"Before," she paused, sucking in a deep breath. "In Gibbs basement, he said that he did everything because he wanted to kill my father."

Tony sucked in a big gulp of air, which felt like tiny daggers as he swallowed it. She looked at him, a frown on her face. Maybe, they should stop, she decided. The conversation was heavy, so heavy.

"This is hard for you," Ziva said, "We should stop."

"It's harder for you," he repeated. "I haven't said my safeword yet, you can keep going."

"You promise that you will say it, if it gets too much," Ziva begged. How much more could she subject him too. How much more would he take, before he up and left? "Do not martyr yourself."

"I promise," he said with a half smile.

"Ari was convinced that his conception had been deliberate," Ziva reported, as that basement filled her thoughts. Tony nodded, Fornell had harboured similar suspicions all those years ago. "And that my father, had his mother killed, that he somehow ordered or knew about the retaliatory strike."

He coughed on nothing by air. He felt sick. His head swam. He had believed Eli David capable of many things, but that.

"Do you believe that?" he asked.

"Sometimes, it felt like delusions," Ziva whispered, as her eyes got glassy. "Sometimes, I wondered if he were right."

"Did you ever ask?" he paused swallowing thickly. "Your Dad."

"We never talked about Ari," Ziva whispered. "I tried to once, but he shut it down."

That attempt at dinner, a few weeks into that summer she was returned to Tel Aviv. It had started innocently enough, Ziva had mentioned something about Ari liking a particular dish and Eli's face had darkened, before he grabbed his phone and said he had work to do. She had known then, to never say Ari's name.

"Sorry," he whispered, but she wasn't listening.

"When it became apparent about what Ari had become," Ziva paused. "My father never even flinched, when he confirmed what had to be done. I suppose that should have been a sign of what was to come."

He took her hand, and squeezed it. All these years later, on those nights when sleep was an elusive mistress, he lay awake and wondered how any man could leave his own daughter to die.

"It was supposed to be Ilan," Ziva whispered. "My father wanted someone close to the family to handle it. He wanted it handled discretely. I told my father that I was Ari's control officer, and it should be me. My father tried to tell me how it would end. But I had told myself I could not lose Ari as well, and I wanted all of them to be wrong."

Her chin quivered. She ran her hand over her eyes, trying to stem the flow of tears. Still, all these years later she beat herself up, for how stupid she had been. How reckless. Her father's stinging words, _he will die Ziva, and if you are the one to pull the trigger, you must live with that_.

"I doubt Ilan Bodnar would have accused me of having phonesex," he said with a smirk trying desperately to lighten the mood. Maybe, it was inappropriate, but there wasn't a guide for how to act, when your girlfriend is talking about killing her brother. "Or looked so good in a one-piece, and those goggles that were the size of the moon."

The tears came thick and fast. Then a soft echo of a laugh.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, as he pulled her close, patting her hair.

"What are you sorry for?" she whispered into his chest..

"That you had to go through that," he told her. "That things weren't different, for both of you."

"I loved him," Ziva whispered,. "And I killed him. Sometimes I do not know how to reconcile that."

"Maybe you just have to try and move forward," he told her. Her curls splayed on his chest.

"Once Ari and I talked about killing Eli," Ziva uttered as she pulled back, looking up at him.

He felt bile rise in his throat. He was not surprised by the admission. He had always known there was a darkness in Ziva, that she tried to keep tamed.

"We were drunk. Ari and my father had just had a huge fight. Ari told me he was going to kill Eli. He started telling me how he would do it, which gun he would use, and where." Ziva whispered.

That smoky room came back to her. Her father's apartment in Tel Aviv. The sad dinner the three of them had shared, with Tali's absence growing more and more obvious, as the clock ticked slowly. The fight between father and son had enflamed without much kindling, old wounds suddenly found themselves opened. Ari had slammed the front door, so hard it had bounced on its hinges. Eli had scoffed and poured himself another drink. She had left the old man too it, he had aged ten years in the months since Tali had been lost.

Ari had appeared at her apartment hours later, with a bottle of vodka, and an anger still not dulled. The two of them had swigged the clear liquid greedily, and air grievances that never dared be uttered in front of Eli. That's when Ari declared, in a calm and clinical tone that he would kill Eli, with one shot to the head. Just like he had planned to do with Gibbs.

"The next day I tried to suggest to my father that perhaps Ari should go back to Edinburgh for a while, he liked it there," Ziva said softly. "My father brushed me off, but I should have been more insistent."

"None of what happened was your fault," he told her. "Nobody blames you."

"I blame me," she whispered, as her chin trembled. "How can I not?"

"I know," he uttered.

"I should have noticed that Ari was changing, that he was letting the darkness consume him," Ziva whispered. "Maybe, if I had done that, things would be different."

"Nobody blames you," he repeated.

"Does it make you think less of me?" she asked, biting her lip with nervousness. "Knowing what I did. Knowing that I killed him."

"When have you ever cared what somebody else thought of you, Ziva?" he asked. She was the strongest person he knew.

"I care about what you think of me," Ziva replied. "You are not just anyone to me."

"Ziva, nothing that you've told me, now or at any other time on this trip, has made me love you any less," he told her. "Seeing you all being all brave, and open up about your past has made very love you more."

"I love you too," she whispered. "But you must think something of all of this. I do not even think there is a movie for this situation."

"All happy families are unlike," he quoted. "All unhappy families are unhappy in their own way."

"Anna Karenina," she said, her eyes lighting up in recognition. "Dare I ask which movie adaption you picked that up from?"

"I'm quoting the 1935 classic, with Greta Garbo," he told her. "You made your issues with Keira Knightley one known."

"It was very loosely based on the plot, it even says so in the credits," she declared as she looked into his eyes. "I thought we made a deal about quotes."

The DVD had been watched during those lazy days after they had handed in their badges. Ziva had pressed herself into him, as they stretched out on her overstuffed couch. Ziva had picked apart all the differences between the latest adaption in comparison to the book, and gotten progressively angrier, as the movie wore on.

"I agreed not to quote books, you agreed not to quote movies," he told her. "But we agreed books that have been made into movies are fair game."

A smile crossed her face, and it was a welcome sight. The sun was slipping into the sky. The sunset was almost over. The grey-dark of early evening, had been pulled over the sky, like an old curtain. The city was still buzzing.

"Do you wish things were different?" Ziva asked. "Do you wish Ari had never come into your lives?"

Did he wish he had never met her?

"I wish lots of things were different, Ziva," he told her. "But you can't change the past. If things had been different all those years ago, then things would be different now. Your past is your past, but like I said, nothing you've said or done has made me think less of you. Sure, I wish things had been easier for us, but I wouldn't change a thing. "

"You are stronger person that you give yourself credit for," she whispered, as she cupped his face with her hands. He pressed his nose onto hers. "I wish things had been easier, too."

"It is what it is," he uttered.

"You are stealing my words," she whispered, as she placed a kiss on his cheek. He had not shaved for a couple of days, the bristles tickled her lips.

"I'm learning from you," he assured her. "You're a wise woman, you know."

She laughed again, throwing her head back. Her curls waterfalled down her back. He smiled too.

"There you two lovebirds are," Schmeil called as he appeared, with a giant security guard by his side. Tony smiled at the comparison between the sizes of the two men. Schmeil was still leaning to heavily on his walking stick, but was in good spirits. "Shall we get outta here?"

"Schmiel, let's party!" Tony called out, as the two of them got up, hands still entangled, and slowly moved toward Schmeil.

 **A/N** :

Hi! Thanks for all the love.

Sorry, this took so long. The old muse got side tracked. I have been worrying about this turning into the Saint Tony fic, with him just being perfect. I like my characters complicated. Oh well, it is what it is.

Someone did ask me a few chapters ago, how I planned to handle to Deena situation. Avoidance, has always been my default strategy, so here we go. I could rant until the cows come home about Deena but I will not.

Also, man I wish Ziva had quoted that line from Anna Karenina on the show. I mean she was clearly a book nerd, (quoting Moby Dick, and her love of Faulkner).

I don't own a thing, otherwise Deena would not have even been a character.

Jaffa Cakes, are the most amazing biscuit-cake hybrid. The are sold in the UK. They have orange flavouring and a chocolate covering.

The 2012 Anna Karenina was considered a very loose adaptation of the novel. There have been a dozen or so film adaptations of the book.


	12. Chapter 12

Over the years, Anthony DiNozzo had developed many special talents; he had mastered beer-pong, how to tell Abby bad news, and how to detect a cinema in a ten mile radius. Wherever he was in the world, he could sense the overpriced popcorn, and hear the surround sound. It didn't matter, whether it was a huge multi-plex it deepest darkest suburbia or some arthouse hipster outfit in a gentrifying neighbourhood.

He knew, as they were in some back street, in the middle of Tel Aviv. He knew they were close to a cinema. He could taste the buttery popcorn in his mouth.

"Close your eyes," Ziva purred into his ear. Her voice could bring him to his knees.

"Why?" he asked, as she stood too close to her, a hand resting on her bare shoulder.

"I have a birthday surprise," Ziva told him.

He had expected this birthday, like so the ones before, to pass without a mention. Ziva had other ideas, making a big show of it. He had woken to her placing soft kisses on his body, nuzzling his neck, as she whispered happy birthday in all of her languages.

"What you did this morning was a birthday surprise," he told her, a smirk eclipsing his face, as his face reddened thinking of the mornings activities. "I'll be remembering that for the rest of my life."

She let a half-laugh. Her eyes crinkled. She had been laughing more in the last few days, he had started to wonder, if now that they were back in Tel Aviv, things had come full circle, and they would be heading home soon.

"I hope you remember every detail," she told him, and eyebrow coyly raised. "Because I only do _that_ , on very special occasions."

It had been a long time since his birthday, had been a special occasion. A very long time indeed. This birthday, by virtue of including her, had beat some many others in recent years, including that truly awful one where they believed her to be dead.

"Close your eyes," she whispered, as she placed her hands over his eyes. "Trust me, you will love this."

"More than what you did this morning?" he asked, as her fingers closed in on his eyes.

"Maybe not as much as that," she said with a shrug. She buried her nose onto his his shoulder, as she tried to guide him, down the street. He could only imagine what they looked like to people going about their daily business. "This would be easier if I could trust you to actually close your eyes."

"You don't trust me," he asked, in a joking tone.

"I do," Ziva said softly, "But I know you, and I know you will peak. You spoil your own surprises."

Probably because over the years, the surprises life had given him, had been pretty terrible.

They walked around a corner, passing a food stall, a juice store, and a bunch of yuppies shouting into their cellphones.

"You can open your eyes," she whispered into his ear, before pulling her hands away.

His cinema detection skill apparently worked in foreign lands as well. The cinema, was new but had been decorated like and old hollywood cinema. From a few feet away, he could see it was rather impressive.

"Happy Birthday," she declared, as she held her hand above her sunglasses to shield the sun. "I know that this is not how you planned to spend your forty-"

He reached for her, and placed a kiss on her lips. His age did not need to be verbalised. Forty had come and gone, and sometimes he wondered what exactly he had to show for it.

"You don't need to say it," he said, as he pulled back from the kiss. Ziva did not need to remind him about his age, his back ache was a pretty good indication of his ever advancing years. "Us DiNozzo's are sensitive about our ages."

"Really," she said, "Your Father says, he is like fine wine, he only gets better with age."

"Well he's certainly mellowed with age," Tony whispered, as the conversation lulled like low tide. "So, what piece of gem of Israeli cinema are you going to introduce me to, today?"

"This cinema specialises in classics, and arthouse," Ziva said. That explained the wannabe lumberjack hipster, that had just walked out he thought, wondering how the guy was not sweltering in the thick plaid shirt. "They are having a Hollywood Classics festival at the moment. They are playing a DiNozzo favourite."

"Die Hard," he offered, with a smile on his face. She playfully slapped at his newly bronzed forearm, before breaking into a brief laugh.

"It is a little bit older," Ziva whispered, "But you always say it is in your top ten."

"Well it's July, and I can't imagine Christmas movies are too popular in Israel," he said, "So that rules out It's A Wonderful Life."

"It does," she said, "But your are in the right cinematic era."

"Angels with Dirty Faces," he whispered, as he thought of his mom's huge hospital bed, and those last words of love, whispered in haggard breaths.

"Not quite," she said, "Would you like a clue?"

"Yes please," he said.

"Of all the gin joints in this town, she walks into mine," Ziva said, in a terrible accent. God, he didn't know if he could be any prouder of her. "Casablanca, yes?"

He was Bogey, she was Bergman, he had this sinking suspicion, he'd be wishing her well on a tarmac somewhere.

"Yeah," he said, his mouth dry.

"I know you are missing movies," Ziva told him, as she tugged at her shirt, looking down at her shoes. "I am very grateful that you are here. I know this has not been easy. I'm so glad you have been here, with me."

"Are we going to have our Casablanca ending?" he asked, a sudden seriousness washing over him, as he placed his finger under her chin, forcing her to look at him.

"What makes you think that?" she whispered, as she placed a hand on his chest, right on his heart. Could she feel it beating too fast?

"Dunno," he uttered softly. "Just never thought I was a happy ending kinda guy."

Hadn't she said words of a similar vein to him over the years. How he would to give her the world, just to see her smile.

"What do you call this morning?" she asked, as he suddenly got a glimpse of the Ziva who had barrelled into his life all those years ago.

The Ziva unafraid to make a pussy joke, when a cat bolted through a catflap. The Ziva, before the world kicked her to the ground, again and again. The Ziva, he would only admit all the years later, he had been kinda scared of. He told people he missed that little minx, but then there were moments, where he knew he loved the Ziva that had emerged from the ashes like a phoenix so much more.

"Well," he said, swallowing thickly, American prudishness making his cheeks redden. "There's that."

"I do not depend on happy endings," she said, "But like you have told me time, and time again, that it is us versus the world, yes?"

"Yeah it is," he told her, as he placed a kiss on her forehead.

"It always has been," she whispered, as she took his hand in hers.

Hopefully, it always would be.

They walked up the white steps steps of the cinema. Ziva skipped slightly ahead, while Tony marveled at the classic cinema movie posters. He smiled at the red velvet, having seen classic cinema decor done both tastefully and tackily over the years. This quiet cinema, straddled the two perfectly.

"So was this your local?" he asked, as they stood in the lobby.

"This is miles from where I grew up," Ziva told him. "And I think it has only been around a few years. It got a write up in Time Out."

She had run passed it, during that summer when she was sent back. She had kept running past it, thinking for just a moment, how much Tony would love it. It was only in those runs, as the sun dawned over Tel Aviv, that she allowed herself to think of him, to dwell on his exile from her life, and to miss him. How in those long four months, she missed her friend. Missed his stupid jokes, and movie references for every occasion. She had missed how he could make her laugh.

"Where did you and Tali go to see a flick then?" he asked. "You know the late 90s and early 2000's had some great teen flicks. You had Clueless, and 10 Things I Hate About You, and Bring It On, which was a bit later on. I mean not exactly John Hughes but still a good era for the high school movie."

She vaguely recalled 10 Things I Hate About You, had that been the one Tali had dragged her to. Tali had tried to say that she wanted to compare the film to the Shakespeare film it was based on, but Ziva had harbored suspicions that movie choice was based on the long-haired male lead.

"And I'm sure there were some great Israeli flicks," he continued.

The only one that came to his mind in that moment was Waltz with Bashir, which he and Ziva had watched some time ago. He had forced himself to really watch, trying to master the animation and the subtitles, but Ziva had gotten restless, first fiddling with her phone, and then making excuses to load the dishwasher. She needed her movies, to be mindless fluff, and to always have a happy ending.

"We were not cinephiles," she said with a smile. "Not like you, anyway."

"So where did you go when you wanted some cinema," he asked. "You can't possibly tell me, your parents never took you to the movies, to keep you quiet on a wet afternoon. And don't try and tell me it never rains in Israel."

"We liked to go the Dizengoff centre," Ziva told him. "Then we could go the shops as well."

"I can't picture you hanging out in the mall, like you're an extra on Mean Girls," he whispered.

"I hated it," Ziva reported. "But Tali liked it. Every time, we'd go, we would bump into one her friends."

"Tell me more David family movie trivia," he asked, as walked toward to the ticket counter. The cinema seemed to be only populated by old people, probably because of the day of the week.

"We were not a family who went to the movies," she told him. "I already told you that."

"You told me that your parents denied you the basic human right of having a tv," he said.

"We had a television," she told him, with a smile. "We just did not watch it."

"What on earth did Mama and Papa Bear David, have against the greatest invention since electricity?" he asked.

She smiled. Her parents view of television, had been on the few things they could agree on.

"My mother said it rotted brains," Ziva told him. "My father just did not like the noise. I can assure you, Tali and I watched enough television, just covertly."

"Really?" he asked, dragging out the syllables. "Tell me more about your covert television viewing,"

"We were watching television, the day Rabin was shot," she told him. "My parents had just separated, and my mother was out, on what I can only assume was a date. Aunt Nettie was looking after us, but she fell asleep. You know I can still remember what we were watching."

"Seriously?" he asked.

"It was a massive thing," Ziva told him. "You ask anyone, they could probably tell you where they were when they found out Rabin was shot. Schmeil could probably give you a blow by blow account of his day, he has a very good memory."

His Israeli history was hazy, much less hazy that it would have been if he did not know her. He knew Rabin had been the Prime Minister, who had been shot by a fellow Jew.

"What was on?" he asked.

"Crocodile Dundee," she told him, before placing a hand on his lips. "Don't you dare try and do an Australian accent."

"Okay," he croaked as he freed himself from her hand.

She brought the tickets, and some overpriced popcorn, while he stood by her side. He tried not the groan as the price flashed up on the till, even when he roughly converted the amount into dollars, it was still ridiculously expensive. She swiped her card, without second thought.

"You know, I think this will go down as one my top ten birthdays," he told her as he threw a piece of popcorn into his mouth. "At least this side of thirty."

"I dread to think what your pre-thirty birthdays would have been like," she said, as they walked down the corridor to the cinema.

"Imagine Animal House crossed with Porkies," he told her. "Actually, don't. I want you to retain just a tiny bit of respect for me."

"I lost that when you dressed up as fat Elvis," she told him, with that smile he loved. They slipped into the cinema, which was only occupied by a few other patrons.

"I'll give you that," he told her. "It didn't even have the desired effect on the girl."

"Does that mean you'll never dress up for me?" she asked.

"Well Miss David," he whispered, dropping his head close to hers, "That depends on how nicely you ask."

They took their seats, lapsing into silence and occasional giggles. She rested her head on his shoulder. He ate popcorn by the handful.

Two rows behind them, a man who had avoided all security cameras, despite Tel Aviv's obsession with CCTV, sat down. He kept his cap firmly on his head. He slipped his burner cellphone out of his pocket, pulling up a photograph of Tony and Ziva, laughing and joking. He sent the image, with the message found them to a cellphone number that was not saved in his contacts, and slipped into the seat.

 **A/N** :

I don't own a thing.

Thanks for the love. Especially, those who have been frequent reviewers. Thanks so much.

The thing about Crocodile Dundee being on TV when the news broke the Rabin was shot is from the book Killing A King by Dan Ephron.

Don't worry, they won't have their Casablanca ending.


	13. Chapter 13

Tony sucked in a huge gulp of air, trying to settle his beating heart. The adrenaline pulsed through him. Tony sighed as he surveyed the mess in the safehouse chic apartment. The white walls now had blood red decoration. There were four dead bodies lying on the floor, with various gunshot wounds in their chests. Ziva was on the other side of the room, alive.

Still, it was not his worst birthday ever.

"Ziva," he called, as he looked across the room, to her. She was leaning on the kitchen counter, taking even breaths in and out. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," she quipped, obviously not fine. "Are you alright?"

She stared at the body directly in front of her. The man was about her age. A golden band was around his ring finger. It glistened in the late afternoon sun. Someone would cry for him, tonight. There was always somebody who would cry for the dead.

"Yeah," he said as he took a few more breaths. He placed his empty gun on the table. It was still warm.

It had been Ziva who had thought something was hinky. Her ninja senses had gone off before the opening credits of the movie. She spent the entire movie fidgeting in her seat. She had hustled him out of the movie theatre before the credits rolled on Casablanca. They had taken the very long route home, Ziva driving him around the dodgier neighbourhoods of Tel Aviv, in the hope of losing the car that was tailing them. They had also stopped off at a storage place, with Ziva revealing she had a storage locker full of weapons. Just like that case they'd worked all those years ago, during that city wide blackout.

"You should call Adam," Ziva said, each word punctuated by a small breath. A bruise was forming on her face. Her eyes never left the man with the golden ring. "We do not have jurisdiction here."

His first thought had been to call Gibbs, as if the silver haired fox could cross the ocean and save the day.

"Yeah," he sighed, as he fished his phone from his front pocket, and scanned through the contact list. Glad that he had saved the number, when Adam had given him.

Two of the men had been waiting for them. He had wanted to run, but Ziva had insisted that whomever was after them was like a cockroach, they had to be exterminated before the spread. He had taken her word for it. They had gone in guns blazing, using all the tricks they had learnt from the bar fights over the years. Two more men had arrived within minutes, and they had been taken out too. They had to be more economical with the bullets, the second time around, which meant more hand-to-hand combat. The result was four dead bad guys, and minor bruising for the good guys.

Adam answered with a casual 'allo. Then listened carefully, as Tony relayed the turn of events. He reported that he would be there soon.

Tony stepped over the dead body to stand next to Ziva. She still held onto the counter for dear life. Her eyes were distant now.

"He told us to stay put," Tony said, as he took her hand. "He'll be here with the clean up crew soon. I was thinking we should probably call Gibbs. NCIS has probably heard about what happened by now. We don't need Abby freaking out from the other side of the world."

"Your birthday," she said softly. "It is ruined."

"Well getting shot at, certainly put a damper on the party," he said with a smile. "But it's not actually the worst one ever."

Nothing would ever be worse than the summer they thought she was dead.

"I will make it up to you," she told him.

"You don't need to," he assured her. "I'm just glad that you're okay, that we're okay."

He squeezed her hand. She didn't squeeze back. She stared at the dead bodies that littered the formerly white-walled apartment.

Adam appeared in the doorway, with a couple of men with guns on their hips, behind them. He made no effort to introduce them all.

"Seems like you two made quite a mess," Adam said with a smirk. Ziva remained silent. Adam said something in Hebrew, but got nothing from Ziva. He turned back to Tony. "I was telling Ziva that this reminded me of something from our army days. You should get Ziva to tell you some stories, we had a lot fun, when we served."

Ziva never talked about her army days.

Tony looked at Ziva. Still sullen. Her eyes focused on the guy with the wedding ring. He squeezed her hand again, and she looked back at him. Eyes carefully blinking. Tony found himself thinking only one thing, Ziva was spooked.

Tony listened to the hum of the two officers, Adam had brought with him. Though Tony had no idea what the two were saying, he recognised the banter of a crime scene conversation. He felt a warm nostalgia fill his heart, as he watched them slide latex gloves onto their hands, and get out the portable fingerprint scanners. God, he missed his job.

"They were hired guns," Adam declared, as he looked up from his smartphone. He showed Tony a mug shot, on the tiny screen.

"Aren't we all," Ziva said with a heaving breath. She let go of Tony's hand and walked toward the bathroom.

"The four of them have loose gang connections," Adam declared. "Your friends at NCIS believe somebody is after Gibbs, and by extension Ziva."

"Something like that," Tony said.

The heard retching coming from the bathroom. Adam and Tony shared a look, eyebrows raised equally high. The vomiting was new.

"I thought you were not hurt," Adam said.

"Well I told her the falafel stand looked gross, but she didn't listen," Tony joked, as he grabbed a water bottle from the kitchen counter, and walked toward the bathroom.

Ziva was sitting with her knees to her chest, leaning against the cool tiled wall of the bathroom. Her face was pale. Her eyes still pierced right through him.

"Guess the adrenaline wore off," he muttered, as he sat down next to her. His back protested but he sat anyway. He handed her the water, and she took a greedy gulp.

"The first time I killed somebody, I did not flinch," Ziva uttered, her voice distant, like it always got when the memories bobbed to the surface. "I did not even think about it. No nightmares. No guilt. It was just something I had to do."

Tony had peed his pants, and been racked with guilt for days, the first time he had killed a suspect. He had even visited the police shrink more than once after the mandatory session.

"I was very young," Ziva said. "And I was the first in my unit to make a kill. It was the first of so many kills."

Now, all of them flashed before her, like a bad movie. She remembered the kid laying at the checkpoint, without the bomb they accused him of carrying. The building that blew up taking with it two children in the form of collateral damage. The man she had swiped with a credit card. Guilt raced through her veins. It manifested in sickness. Maybe, she should just keep vomiting. Maybe, she could purge all the death from her system?

Like a butterfly, could she emerge from this cocoon, brand new and clean.

"You did what you to do," he said, as he leaned into her, their shoulders touching.

"And then later on," she whispered. "I treated it like a sport. I took lives, in horrible ways. I used to brag about all the ways I have killed people. There has been so much death."

He turned to her, and flicked a loose curl from her face.

"We signed up to protect people from bad guys," he said. "Sometimes we have to kill people to protect the world from bad guys."

How could he still believe in good guys and bad guys?

"Allegiances change," Ziva whispered, biting her lips. "You know that. And if you had asked the people I killed whether they thought they were justified in their actions, they would have said yes."

"Ziva," he all but shouted, trying to snap her out of the funk.

"How are my kills any different?" she shouted, throwing her hands out. "How am I no different from Ari or those men? Should they not throw me in jail, and throw away the key."

"You had to kill Ari," he told her. "You had to kill those men. It was kill or be killed."

"Those men have families," Ziva whispered. "People will cry for them tonight."

There will be empty chairs at dining tables. Kids crying for their fathers. Tiny bodies in brand new black funeral outfits. Both of them knew this dance.

"People would have cried for us," he told her, as he took her hand in his. "If things had gone the other way."

Gibbs. Ducky. Abby. McGee. Palmer. Vance. Leyla and Amira. Abby from CGIS. His father. Her Schmiel. Hell even Tobias Fornell, himself might have shed a tear for them.

"People will cry for them," Ziva continued. "Just like I cried for my mother, my father, my sister and my brother."

And so many others. Her tears for the dead could hydrate this water starved land.

"Yeah," he said with a sigh. "It's a part of the job, it sucks, but you can't let it eat you up inside."

"I do not want it to be," she whispered.

"Then don't let it," he said. "Adam I'll give us a ride of Mossad, we'll check in with the crew, and then we'll go home. We'll get our badges back, and we'll be better with looking after ourselves. "

Maybe, they would actually go to the mandatory psych sessions, they were supposed to go to. Maybe, they'd actually talk about the ghosts that stole their sleep. Maybe, they'd be better together.

"I do not want it to be a part of the job," Ziva whispered. She was laying down her guns, waving her white flag, and calling for surrender.

"Sometimes you have to kill people, Ziva," he told her. "It sucks, but you have to do it. It's usually for the greater good. It's part of the job."

 _We do this for the greater good_ , her father had told her, as she held her first gun, how heavy it felt in her tiny hands. _All of our neighbours want us dead, Ziva. We must protect ourselves_.

"Then maybe I will not go back to the job," she whispered, as she started to get up. He tugged lightly at her wrist, pulling her back down. She couldn't drop truth bombs on him, and just walk away.

"Why don't we say hi to bossman, and have a nap before you start making career decisions," he told her, as she sat back down. The world must be titling on its axis he was the sensible one. "And maybe something to eat."

"I have been thinking about it for a while," she said.

Evil was a monster, that seemed only to be coming back with more rage, each time they tried to stop it.

"How long?" he asked.

 _We just keep making targets of ourselves. I do not know how much more I can take_.

"On and off since Mike Franks was killed," Ziva admitted, surprised about the light feeling that washed over when she did. "Maybe even before then. I thought about a lot of things during that summer."

The horrors of this job, haunted her. She had fallen into the old habits of suppressing them. She was supposed to be stronger than that. She had been raised to be better than such weakness. So, she fell into old routines. Running until her body gave up Presenting herself to danger, daring it to take pull her under, in order to feel alive. She couldn't leave her job. They had pulled her from the desert, despite all she had said to them, and on limited intel. They had kept her going. How could she ask them to understand?

"Ray and I talked about it once," Ziva whispered. "When we talked about the future. We always talked about the future, never the past."

All these years later she was convinced she liked the idea of Ray, more than she actually liked Ray. She wanted her American dream, her something permanent, and Ray seemed to almost fit the bill. She could draw a line under her past, and go for her happily ever after, just like the princesses in the books her mother read to her and Tali. Even as a child, she had not believed in happy endings.

"We can talk about the past, the present, and the future, as much as you want," he quipped, "but let's focus on sorting out the dead guy's first."

"Are you angry with me?" Ziva asked, her voice small.

"I'm surprised," he admitted, "You kinda just threw this on me. I mean I get it. I really do. But it's a lot of adjust too. I mean we've been working together for eight years, we've got our rhythm. I dunno how I'd do any of it without you."

She needed to lay down her sword, yet she felt so selfish doing so.

"I just cannot keep fighting," she told him. Eyes bulging. She squeezed his hand tight. "It feels like I have been fighting forever."

She didn't think she had any fight left in her.

"If this is something you really want, I'll support you, you know that." he continued, his voice soft. "The MidEast team would love you. Plus they aren't too far from the squad room, we could share lunch. I don't think I'll be able to go back to the PB and J life, after all the amazing food we've been eating on this trip."

He made it sound so easy. How could he be so optimistic?

"If I sourced the intel that led to people's deaths, how is that any different from killing them myself," Ziva told him. Death begets death. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. "I think I would need to make a clean break, yes?"

Dammit, she'd even got the idiom right. He just didn't know if he could face not seeing her everyday at work.

"You want to let go of the badge completely," he asked. His pocket felt so empty without his. How could she think about let it go forever?

"Yes," Ziva whispered. "And that scares me a lot, but I need to do this. I really have to do this."

She'd been wielding guns, one way or another for over a decade now. She had changed along with the badges.

"Whatever you need to do," he told her. "I'm right here with you, every step of the way."

Even though it hurt like hell.

"It may even be easier for us," Ziva whispered. "We would not have a conflict of interest, nor would we have to worry about Gibbs and Rule 12. I know Director Vance does not approve of agents who are together, working on the same team."

"That's practically null and void, by now." he told her. "And I'd never ask you to give up your job for me."

"I want to give up the job for me," she told him softly. "I need to do this. I am not like you and Gibbs I cannot keep running into the fire."

She had run into the fire too many times. Always the first one in, and the last one out. She had gotten caught in its fury. Now she was too burnt to face going in again.

"You're stronger than me and Gibbs put together," he said softly. "You're so strong."

She knew to get out, when the fire got to hot. He was more like the frog caught in the bowl of milk, who didn't realise it was turning into butter.

Adam appeared in the doorway of the bathroom, he was pressing his phone to his ear, using his shoulder.

"Director Elbaz has fielded no less than six calls from Agent Gibbs," Adam reported. "She has organized a teleconference. We should go."

Tony smirked, then let out a chuckle. The functional mute knew how to kick up a fuss, when he needed too.

Ziva got up, then offered her hands to help Tony get up. Adam moved out of earshot.

"McGee will probably get us some cushy tickets home," he said letting himself get excited at the thought of going home. "Maybe first class, or a private jet."

"There is just one more place I have to go," Ziva said. She had to show him where it all begun."I promise you I only need a couple more days. Then I will be ready to go home. You can go home, and I will be right behind you."

Home. He wanted to go home to so badly. He missed D.C's crazy summer humidity, and the stupid traffic circles. He missed his apartment. He missed the rest of the team. He missed his fish. Still, it was nothing without her.

"No," he told her, "We came here together, we'll leave together."

It was them versus the world.

 **A/N** :

I don't own a thing.

Thanks for all the love.

Be glad, you were spared from me writing an action scene.


	14. Chapter 14

The sun dawned over the farmhouse, its heat already searing through the windows. Ziva sat her knees to her chest, her hair sprawling down her back. The photographs, were sitting around her. Photographs that predated her existence. Her grandparents, as smiling landowners, their destroyed homelands in Europe long forgotten. Her Uncle and her father dressed in matching olive uniforms, with cigarettes hanging out of their almost identical mouths. They were barely adults when they fought in their first war. Then the later ones, in colour, her whole life. Her as swaddled baby. Her smiling at newly born Tali. Her looking like a sullen teenager.

Here she was, back to the start.

"Ziva," Tony called from across the room. He was standing, hair mussed, a OSU shirt pulled over boxers. Bare feet on the stone slabs.

"Hi," she uttered, looking up. "Come here, I want to show you some things."

She scanned the photographs, picking up few. She sorted them into a pile, like shuffling cards.

"Have you been up all night?" he asked, as he slowly moved across the room. "Even ninjas need their beauty sleep."

"I can sleep later," she replied, as adjusted her position, sitting like a little buddha, ankles tucked under knees. She parted the sea of photographs and tapped the space in front of her. "Sit."

He lowered himself down in front of her. His back protesting such early morning movement. The floor was a hard seat. They sat facing each other. Knees touching.

"What did you want to show me?" he asked.

He scanned the sea of photographs. There were hundreds, of a period spanning sixty-odd years. Some were still in black and white. A younger, slimmer, and happier Eli David beamed up from a photograph, that got caught in the early morning light.

She thrust the pile of of photographs into his hands.

The first one, was of her father, standing smiling with his arms around her mother, who was round with pregnancy, in front of the farmhouse.

"That you in there?" he asked, pointing to her mother's stomach.

"Yes," she said with a smile, so much brighter than the ones in the picture. "This was only a couple of months after they got married, and a couple more before I was born."

Tony smiled too, then flicked that photograph of the back of the pile. The next photograph was of her mother looking exhausted, holding a baby, and smiling down at it. He sucked in a breath, as he realised, the baby was her. He stared at it, a very newly born Ziva, red-faced and swaddled. He looked at the wall in the picture, then at the walls in the farmhouse.

"I was born here, just like my father was," she said, as her eyes flitted across the lounge room. "In that bedroom over their.."

She pointed to a door, of a room that she had not shown him yet. They had arrived in the farmhouse, the day before, after a lengthy video conference, with Gibbs. Tony world swear he could actually see the relief wash over Gibbs, when he saw the two of them alive. Ziva had managed to be civil to Orli, and Tony had told McGee he was McLovin' him long distance. Then she had hustled into the car, and driven out of the city. She had shown him odd rooms of the farmhouse, before they went to sleep, but much of the house remained unexplored.

"So your mom was one of those hippie homebirth types?" he asked, still holding the picture.

A burst of laughter erupted from her. It made her snort. Her curls fell back.

"No," Ziva finally said, between laughter spurts. "The way she told it, I was in a rush to be born. The winter storms had come early that year, and the hospital was further away then. My Aunt was staying here, after her fiance left her, so she played midwife."

He smiled too. A half-laugh came from him. Of course, Ziva would emerge into the world all guns blazing.

He flipped the picture to the back of the pile, and studied the ones that followed. Ziva in a white baby sunhat, laying on her father's chest, probably at a beach. Ziva standing in front of her mother's legs, probably taking early steps. Ziva, with matching pigtails, sitting with a darker haired Schmeil drinking tea, while her mother round with child, smiled on.

"Knowing Schmeil, that was probably real tea," Ziva declared.

A small laugh slipped from his lips.

The next photograph was of Ziva sitting on a hospital bed, a tiny hand placed on a newborn baby's head, while her mother smiled. Then there was Ziva, reading to a still swaddled Tali her book. Then there was Ziva, sitting on her father's shoulders, looking out at the valley they had driven past, on their way to the farmhouse..

"You were a cute kid," he told her.

"I was innocent then," she said softly, before her eyes turned to another photo on the floor, one of Tali missing a tooth.

The next photograph was of Ziva, dressed in a tutu, and her hair somehow wrangled into a bun. She was pointing her toes out, and had a huge smile on her face.

"When I was that age, I wanted to be a ballerina," Ziva told him, pointing at the tiny face in the picture.

"I trying to picture you as Anna Pavlova," he said, with a half smile. "I bet you were good."

How had she gone from Anna Pavlova to Lara Croft?

"I was good," Ziva told him. "I could have been better, but I wasted my time on stage. I was not focused."

That sea of people; parents, grandparents, siblings, all there for the recital. The empty seat next to her mother, with its little reserved sign on it.

"You were looking for your Dad," he said.

"Yes," Ziva admitted. "I would scan the whole audience, but he was never there. Michal Somoilov's father came sometimes, and she was the product of an affair. I was jealous of her for that."

"Every year, all the kids would be picked up for Thanksgiving or Christmas," Tony begun, swallowing thickly, as memories surface, "And I'd wait. I'd wait with them. Even if he'd sent a note, saying that he just couldn't that year. Every time, I'd wait to see his town car. The old man never came of course."

Ziva placed her hand on his, rubbing the knuckles.

He took a few breaths, and looked at her. The early morning sun gleamed on her face. Dark circles were forming under her eyes, from her all-nighter.

He flicked to the next photograph. In this snap, Ziva was about the same age she was in the ballet photograph, but this time she was standing in front of the farmhouse, a gun across her chest. His throat got dry, as he studied her too-small hand, on a too-big trigger.

"How old are you in this?" he asked.

"Nine, maybe," she said with a shrug. "This house, was where he would train us."

She had taken her first breath in this house. She had fired her first gun in this house. It had all started here.

"Nine," he said, squirming in his seat. "You were nine."

"Maybe younger," Ziva said. "I cannot remember exactly."

She did know, that the picture of her dancing and the picture of her holding the gun, were taken less than a year a part. Just before a growth spurt.

"That's just so young," he choked. "You were so little."

"He must have thought what he was doing was right," Ziva said, as she picked up another photograph, of father and daughter in their holiday best, both smiling. "He had seen so much. Every day was a fight to survive."

Was she really defending her father? After everything, that was lost because of him.

"Still," he mused. "You were so young. So innocent."

Too young. Too innocent. Did Eli not mourn for her loss of innocence?

"Children lose their innocence," Ziva uttered. "I just lost mine earlier than most. It is what it is."

He sucked in a breath, and moved along to the next photograph. Ziva and Tali, sitting next to Schmeil, piles of books surrounding them. Ziva and Tali standing either side of a gangly young adult Ari, who wore a serious frown. Ziva now a sullen teenager, sitting with Tali and her mother, eating ice cream.

"That was just before she died," Ziva told him. "Maybe that is the last photograph, we have of her."

"Thank you for showing me these," he whispered. "I know it isn't easy."

"There are more," Ziva told him. "I want you to see all of them."

The next photograph, was of Ziva suddenly taller, with her arm around Tali, as they watched a sunrise, over the olive groves. Her eyes had a sadness in them, he wondered how long it had been between her mother's death and the photograph. Then there was one of teenage Ziva receiving a certificate at school, her wild curls tucked behind her ears. The last one was of Ziva, dressed in her army uniform, Tali next to her, wearing a t-shirt with a peace sign on it.

"Her clothing choice was deliberate," Ziva told him. "My father made her sit through the whole swearing-in ceremony with a sweater on because of the embarrassment of it all. It was July. He went to talk to somebody he knew from when he was in the army, and that's how we managed to take that picture, and she took the sweater off before she died of heatstroke."

He smiled. Ziva lifted the photographs from his hand, and started laying them down.

"This was me," Ziva whispered. "When I found these photographs last night, I found it hard to remember that I had ever been that little girl. She was so strong, so stubborn, and so good."

"All of those things, sound just like you," he chimed in. "Just like the Ziva David, I know and love."

"She wanted to be ballerina, and she became a killer," Ziva whispered. "Things could have been different."

"Most people aren't the things they wanted to be when they were nine," he said. "And you are much more than a killer."

"What did you want to be when you were nine?" she asked.

"Magnum P.I," he said with a smile.

"You basically are," Ziva said. "You have guns, and solve crimes."

"I don't live in Hawaii," he joked, "And my car is not as cool as Magnums."

"I am glad you have limited your Hawaiian shirts," Ziva told him, placing a hand on his chest. "And it is not like one day, I stopped wanting to be a ballerina, and decided I wanted to be like my father. I had other dreams."

"What else did you want to be?" he asked. She picked up the picture of her receiving a certificate. She had such a huge smile on her face, as she held the certificate.

"I want to go to university," Ziva told him. "I was a very good student, despite everything that was going on."

"You are smart," he told her. "What did you want to study?"

For a moment he allowed himself to picture her as co-ed, wearing a OSU sweater, and blue jeans.

"Languages," she said, "And history. I wanted to be like Schmeil."

He then pictured her, sitting in an office, surrounded by piles of paper. Writing smart things. Her name in reference section of half-assed essay.

"Once upon a time, I wanted different things," Ziva said. "And I should have gone for them. I should have not gotten so caught up in my father's world. I think that is why, I wanted to come here. I wanted to go back to all these places. To undo things. To save her."

His heart sunk. This princess just wanted to save herself.

"What would you tell her?" he asked pointing to the photo of her, in her tutu. "If you could visit her in a dream or something?"

"You and your movies," she said, shaking her head.

"Humour me," he begged, as he took her hands in his. "What would you tell her?"

"Honestly," she uttered.

"Yeah," he whispered. "Honestly."

"I would tell her to run," Ziva said, her eyes getting classy. "To run from all of it, because what happens next is too much. But I imagine in your little scenario, running is not an option."

She had simply lived through too much. She had suffered too much. How much pain was one person supposed to bear?

"Not really," he said with a gulp. He wished, he could wipe the slate clean for her.

"I would be honest with her," Ziva whispered, a tear falling down her face, as the words got caught in her throat. "I would tell her that it will hurt. I would tell her, that she will do things, things that she never thought she would have to do. I would tell her that there will be parts of herself, that she will lose, and that she will never get back."

He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. Her hands balled into a fist, as she rested it on his chest. Oh, what he would give, to make this stop for her. To make it all better.

"I will also tell her, that it does get better," Ziva whispered, his voice vibrating on his chest. "That she will go to America, and it will nothing like it is in the books. That she will meet people, who are nice to her, with no hidden motive. She will become friends, with bourbon swilling man, who builds boats in his basement. She will have tea, with a man who has a story for everything. She will make friends, with the happiest goth ever, and a computer genius."

"Next time McGoo is feeling all McBlue, I gonna tell him that you called him a computer genius," Tony told her. She looked up at him, and laughed, a glassy eyed laugh.

"I would tell her about you," she whispered, with a sniffle.

"What about me?" he asked.

"About how you make me laugh," she whispered. "How you have a movie reference for every occasion. How you have always had my back. How, you never gave up on me, even when I told you that you should. I would tell her, that despite all of your jokes, that you are good man. You are such a good man, Tony."

"Well I try," he said, hiding behind his thousand-watt grin, as his own eyes got glassy. She rested her chin on his shoulder.

"What would you tell nine year old Anthony DiNozzo?" Ziva asked, as she looked up at him, and placed her hands on his cheek.

"I'd tell him that one day, he'll have a library of movies," Tony said, as his smile started to fade. "I'd tell him that things get better with Dad eventually. I probably wouldn't tell him about Gibbs, because the kid doesn't need to learn what a head slap is just yet. I'd tell him about Abs, about Duckman, and about Jimmy. I'd tell him how Tim McGee is a good man in a storm, and to be nicer to him."

Ziva nodded, and pressed her nose into his, and closed her eyes. Tony let a tear slip down his face. Ziva's thumb wiped it away.

"I'd tell him all about you. He'd get very excited about your Jane Bond days," Tony continued, as he pulled her close. "I'd tell him how you make me wanna be a better person. How when I'm with you, I feel like I'm home. I haven't felt like that in a long time."

"I am your home," she echoed, unsure if she had heard him right.

"Yeah," he said nodding. "As long as I'm with you, it's all okay."

"We will be okay," Ziva told him, willing it into the universe. "We will be okay."

"We're gonna be better than okay," he said. "We're gonna have an amazing life together. One day we'll get our little house, and we'll make it ours, DVD shelves for me, and a huge kitchen for you. Then we'll get a dog, and you'll let me name it, but you won't understand the reference. So you'll probably just call it doggie in Hebrew."

"Kalev," Ziva told him, with a huge smile. "Dog in Hebrew, is Kalev."

She could almost picture the little life he was promising her. It wouldn't be much, but it would be theres. Their little house. Their yappy dog. Their little piece of paradise.

"And then one day we'll get married. It'll be a crazy party, with a Rabbi and everything," he continued. She smiled. "Gibbs'll head slap me down the aisle, and probably give you a kiss on the cheek, before sitting down. Schmeil and Ducky, will do these rambling speeches. Abby will squeal. And then, we'll have kids. Maybe, they'll be some bizarre mixture of our genes, or maybe they'll kids who didn't quite have the best start in life. We'll love 'em. We will love the hell out of those kids."

Their little house loud with the laughter of children. Teeny-tiny shoes clogging the hallway. Children with innocence that she would fight so hard to preserve. Could this be their life?

"You are getting a bit ahead of yourself," Ziva told him. "You haven't even got your badge back yet."

And she still had to tell Gibbs' she would not be taking hers back.

"I'll get it back," he told her. "And maybe, you'll be all the things, you wanted to be when your were a kid."

"I cannot be a ballerina now," she told him. Would her feet move like they used too? In her head she knew the steps, but would her body co-operate like it should. "And I did not go to university. I am thirty now, it is too late."

She had made her bed, and now she had to lie in it.

"You could still go," he told her. "You could be one of those annoying adult students, who always sits in the front and asks too many questions, and always aces the classes."

She laughed again. He smiled back. Maybe, hey could feel their little world with happiness, and use it as buffer to keep the suffering at bay. Maybe, they could be those annoying shiny happy people.

"I know how much you like dating co-eds," she declared, as she nestled into him. Her warm skin touching his warm skin. "And when we get back, I will look at my options. I have always rushed into things. Perhaps, now is the time to take things slowly, figure out what I really want."

"We'll figure this out," he told her. "We'll go home, and we'll figure it out. We can take as long as you need."

"Because it is us versus the world," she whispered.

"Yeah," he told her. "It is."

 **A/N:**

I don't own a thing. If I did it would have become the Ziva David saves the world show a long time ago. And all the characters would have had extensive therapy episodes.

There will probably be another couple of chapters of this mess.

Thanks for all the love.


	15. Chapter 15

It had been months since his old house, had been filled with so much noise. The basement steps creaked as he slipped into his little underworld.

Oh, how he had missed the noise.

He could hear his 'kids' joking and giggling, after a team dinner, initiated by Abby. These things were always initiated by Abby. Gibbs' dining table had been graced with Ziva's lasagna, Abby's kale salad, which Gibbs' didn't touch, and McGee's very expensive wine and a decadent store-bought dessert. Tony had brought a six-pack of beers, for the less refined members of the family. The beers were all gone, with Gibbs' downing almost three of 'em. It had been Ziva and Tim who shared the wine. Blowing dust off the wine glasses in Gibbs' cupboard, a relic from his second ex-wife.

Dishes clanged. Water splashed. Abby was telling Tony all about Sister Rosita's broken hip. Tony was whinging about the fact Gibbs' didn't have dishwasher, and talking about all the places, he had seen in Israel. He sounded like a goddam guidebook. McGee was filling Tony in, on everything they had missed at work, and the case he would jumping right into.

For a moment the noise banished the ghosts and dust bunnies.

He was okay. His family were all okay.

Well almost, all of them were okay.

A lump of dark curls was sitting on the last step of his basement stairs. Ziva, always was the outlier.

"Ziver," he croaked. His aging eyes, scanning the dark basement. Left hand wrapped around a cool beer.

Crickets chirped outside. The humidity made everything sweaty and sticky, and didn't break despite the descending darkness.

"Gibbs," she whispered, turning to look up at him.

Dark eyes flitting around his messy basement. A basement that was currently empty, with Gibbs not having found a new project. He flicked on the light switch, and walked down the stairs to her.

"Didn't think you were the type to shirk the dishes," he joked.

He lowered his aging knees and sat next to her. Knees touched. He could smell her moisturizer. Vanilla. No wonder DiNozzo had been loathe to leave her side. He had all but expected them to start feeding each other at dinner.

"This is where it started," Ziva whispered, her eyes resting on the spot where Ari's body had fallen. "For us."

 _He was my brother._

Those sad eyes, when she had admitted the truth. That haunting mourning song. That discussion all those years later, when she admitted that Ari's death had been ordered.

 _And now, the closest thing to a father._

She had shed too many tears in this damn basement. Too many tears.

"Yeah," he coughed. "Guess so."

"These past few weeks," Ziva started. "I have been doing a lot of thinking."

"Well that's dangerous," he joked. She smiled for a moment, like the moon peeking from behind the clouds.

"About the past," she breathed. Curls bouncing with the gust of air that erupted from her mouth. She'd been holding that one in.

"Yeah," he said, swilling the beer.

"And the present," she whispered. Voice so soft. "And the future."

"Lotta thinking," he murmured, before taking another sip.

Maybe, he could coat his throat with the beer, to make what came next go down easier. Except, he didn't quite know what was coming next. Never really did when it came to her.

"I took Tony to all of these places," Ziva whispered. Her mother's haunted house. The bus route her sister rode for years. The olive fields she had learnt to shoot in. "I showed him pieces of my past, even the ugly bits, and he didn't run."

Why did they look beyond her actions. Why did they not leave her. Is that not what she deserved. She had caused so much pain.

"Didn't think he would," Gibbs mused.

He had noticed, the way the two of them were now, having finally crossed that line. The two of them had been together for twenty-four hours a day for nearly a month, and yet still stood too close. Still shared lingering looks. He didn't like it, but he couldn't deny the two of them were happy. An emotion neither of them wore too often. The happiness looked good on both of them, even an old curmudgeon like him, couldn't deny that.

"He is a good man," Ziva whispered, "But you know that."

"Yeah," Gibbs smirked. "Only the best people in my team."

Team. The team she didn't want to be part of anymore.

"I do not think," Ziva paused, sucking in a deep breath.

How could she possibly do this? How could should tell the man who had given her so much, and believed in her, that she wanted out. They had pulled her, half-dead, from the desert. Even if they never said it. She owed them. How could she leave now.

"You don't wanna come back," Gibbs said. The beer bubbled back up his throat as he said those words.

"How?" she asked, cocking her head. "Did you guess that."

"Saw the way you looked, when you got your badge back," he muttered.

DiNozzo's whole face had lit up, as he took the badge into his hands. He had called it his little friend, and even given it a spit polish. Ziva, on the other hand, had let hers sit on Gibbs' best table cloth. Her eyes bearing into it, chewing slowing as it stared back at her, glistening in the light from the setting sun. In the end Tony had slipped it into his pocket, claiming he had room for hers too. Abby had then started to rant, that women's clothes never had deep enough pockets. Gibbs' had noticed the way, their hands slipped under the table. DiNozzo's forearm pulsed, as he squeezed her hand tight.

"Things have changed," she whispered.

"This about you and DiNozzo," he asked.

Though nobody could accuse him of being an old romantic. He wanted those too make it. To defy the odds.

"Do you honestly think he has not tried to talk me out of this?" she asked, voice rising. Defenses up.

The hushed voices, in the first class cabin on the plane ride home, with close quarters probably not being the best place for such a conversation. That phone conversation, when they had decided to sleep in the own apartments, only to spend two hours on the phone, like lovesick teenagers. The car ride to Gibbs house, Tony's hands tapping on the steering wheel as the traffic lights took too long to change.

 _I just want you to be sure, Ziva. It's a big change._

"I think he would like it very much if I changed my mind," she continued voice softening. Sometimes, it felt like all she ever did was stress Tony out.

"Never did like change," Gibbs said as he took a final swig of beer. He already wanted another.

"No," she whispered. "This will be hard for him."

"I'll go easy on him," Gibbs said putting on a fake smile.

"That will just freak him out," Ziva said, her eyes twinkling. That half smile appeared again. Just for a second.

Gibbs scoffed, and put the beer bottle to his lips, hoping for just another drop. Didn't she know what the second B in his name, stood for.

"I need to do this," Ziva whispered. "I need to let go of the badge,"

She sucked in a deep breath, and waited. Waited for him to send her back up those stairs, and out of his house. For her never to be welcome again. Instead he squeezed her hand.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?" she echoed, her face crinkled in surprise as she turned to look at him.

"If your heads not in the game," he said. Oh how he wanted another beer.

"You are not disappointed?" she asked.

How could he be? She was doing what was right for her.

"No," he said.

"You are not angry?" she asked.

Goosebumps formed under her skin, like they used when her father shouted. His bellows echoing through the apartment. The way her mother's whole body would tense up. Ziva and Tali hiding under the beds, while her parents exchanged harsh words. Missiles over enemy territory.

He shook his head.

"Never," he assured her.

"You spent all these years training me," she stammered. "The rules."

"Those are rules ain't jus' for the job," he said. "They're for life."

"You rescued me," she whispered. Eyes glassing over. Going to that place. The scars under her clothes started to ache. "You had no reason to even be looking for me. I had shut you all out. You saved me."

Saving her, would have been dragging her on that plane kicking and screaming, before she got within an inch of Saleem Ulman and his murderous men. What they did, was clean up the mess.

"You don't owe us," he said. "Never did."

Her lip quivered. A tear slipped down her bronzed face.

"But-," she stammered, as she brought her hands up to her face and wiped the tear. Why was he making this so easy.

"Did you think that?" he asked. His whole dinner threatened to come back up.

"No," she said too quickly, eyes still watery. She turned her head away from him. He might not be her boss anymore, but he did not need to see her make a fool of herself. "Maybe. Deep down."

"Explains a lot," he whispered.

The way she went after being a NCIS agent. That first year where she volunteered to do all the dangerous work. All those times, she'd tried to say thank you.

"I was proud," she said, slowly moving her head closer to him. "I worked hard to become a NCIS agent."

"I know," he whispered. Her whole face had lit up as he handed her new badge. Now, she could not even face holding it.

"I just do not think I can keep fighting," Ziva whispered, dark eyes baring right into his icy blues.

"Okay," he said swallowing thickly.

"Okay," she echoed. Would it really be this easy?

"I get it," he whispered, as he took her hand in his.

"You do?" she asked. Still, so unsure.

"Mexico," he said. How quickly they all forgot about Gibbs' sangria summer. She looked down at her feet. She looked so damn young. Too damn young to carry this much pain.

"You did not stay gone," Ziva said. "I do not think I will come back."

God, he was gonna miss her on the field.

"I know," Gibbs murmured, as he pulled her close.

Her bouncy curls nestled into his chest. He smelt of sawdust and cheap beer. He smelt safe. His work worn hand, wrapped around her tanned shoulder.

 _It's okay Kelly. Daddy's got you. You're monsters won't come tonight._

 _Ziva, you are old enough to know the monsters are not under your bed. The real monsters are far scarier than anything you can imagine._

"Can I show you something?" she asked.

"Course," he said, as she pulled away.

He watched her dig into her pant pockets. Ziva never was the type to wear impractical clothes. She handed him a photograph folded with a photograph. Crease right down the middle. Her small hands opened the first photograph into his. He was greeted by pint-sized Ziva David, dressed in a pink tutu, a smile on her tiny face.

"This you?" he asked.

Upstairs in his shoeboxes of old memories, and unfinished lives, was a similar picture. A little girl with strawberry blonde strands of hair falling around her face. White ballet stocking sticking out from under a pink tutu.

"Yes," she said with a smile. "You know when I was that age, I wanted to be a ballerina."

He couldn't help the half-laugh that came from his mouth.

"How old?" he asked, his rough finger resting on her time-frozen face.

"Nine, maybe," she shrugged.

A whole year old than his little girl got to be.

She reached over, and revealed the next photograph. Ziva, about the same age, curls bouncing on her shoulders. Tiny hand on a too big trigger. The gun wasn't fake. She was learning to shoot to kill people.

His dinner made another attempt to come back up.

"Tony had the same reaction," Ziva declared.

"Bet he did," Gibbs uttered, eyes unable to divert away from the picture.

"I was about nine when this one was taken too," Ziva told him.

She was a child. She was a child holding a gun.

"I know you did not hold the highest opinion of my father," she begun, "But he would have thought what he was doing was right."

The man had been six feet under, for seven months, and she was still defending him. And it broke Leroy Jethro Gibbs' fractured heart.

"Doesn't make it right," he murmured.

"Maybe not," she said swallowing thickly. "But it is what it is."

"What is this?" he asked, eyes flitting around the basement. How far away was the bourbon?

"My childhood," she whispered. "He trained us. I think that is the only way he knew how to relate to us. He had been a Mossad officer for so long, by the time Tali and I were born. I do not think he knew anything else."

Neither did he, he knew nothing but the core. Still, he learnt as he went along. Princess tea parties. Wild hair wrangled into french braids. Fairies at the bottom of the garden.

"He trained us to survive," Ziva said quietly. "Then to fight. Because the fight was on our own turf. It has always been on our own turf."

 _Zivaleh, your grandfather literally gave an arm for this country. Zivaleh, all our neighbours want us dead. Zivaleh, everyday is a fight to survive. Zivaleh, they are blowing up children just like you in the streets. Zivaleh, we must fight._

"Don't have to explain it to me," he offered.

"But, I did not show you these photos to try and defend my father," Ziva whispered. She slipped the photo of her holding a gun, behind the photo of her dressed as a ballerina.

"I know," he drawled.

"This little girl wanted different things from her life," Ziva whispered, pointing at the tiny picture. Her eyes glassy. Lip quivering. "She would have brave enough not to get caught in her father's web. I need to honour her."

You can't rewrite the past, he'd told her once. But maybe, Ziva was going to get as close as you could.

"Whatya gonna do?" he asked.

"I do not know," she said slowly as a smile dawned over her face. This time it stayed. "I really don't know."

Nope. Didn't sound like the Ziva David he knew.

"Sound awfully happy 'bout that," he mused.

"Eli always had a plan for me," Ziva uttered, voice distant. The second photograph peaked out from behind the first. "I was always training. I had to be the best. I was the best."

"I know, kid," he replied.

That breath of fresh air who sat at Kate's desk. Wild curls. Crazy ninja skills. Daring death to catch her.

"I was the only woman in my unit in the army, and I was better than all of the men," she continued. "In Mossad too. I had to be the best. I never let them treat me any different, because of who my father was."

He patted her leg, as she moved closer to him. Only a few millimeters, but closer.

"And then when I left his world," Ziva said. Voice soft and distance. "But I still felt that I had to stay close. I liked my work at NCIS. That first year, when I came back from Somalia, the badge it-"

"Saved you," Gibbs interjected.

He knew this too. How quickly he slid the badge into his pocket, after Kelly and Shannon were taken. Daring death, to take him, had saved him from doing it himself.

"Yes," she said swallowing thickly. "But I need to let go. Because now it feels like I have been holding my hand over the fire for too long, and it is going to burn."

"So what are you gonna do?" he asked.

"Like I said, I do not know," she replied with a shrug of her shoulders.

"You never were one to sit still," he murmured. "You'll think of something."

"I have a few ideas," Ziva said, "Things I am looking into."

"Like what?" he asked.

"It is all just maybes," she declared. "We do not know how it was pot out."

"Pan out," he corrected. "Tell me."

"College, maybe," she told him, her face lighting up. "When I was younger, I wanted to go to university, very much."

Schmeil offering to cash-in favours for a late admission. Tali faking Ziva's signature on the application form. But, it was already decided. Her friends from the army would do their gap years, then return to wood paneled lecture theatres. She would hold onto her gun. She would keep fighting. Because every day, was a fight to survive.

And it was a fight Tali did not survive.

"Always were one of my smartest," he told her.

All those books. All those languages. How she knew more about America than the rest of the team put together.

She scoffed. How could she compare to McGee and his computers. Abby and her science. Or Ducky had his knowledge of just about everything.

"What ya gonna study?" he asked.

 _I'm gonna be a vet Daddy, seven year old Kelly declared as they stood in the stable admiring the horses. But only for horses._

"I was looking into education," Ziva said. "Tony has been getting all these brochures, and looking up things. He has been very helpful."

"If anyone could manage a classroom full of kids," he muttered.

He remembered that trip of Afghanistan a couple of years back. The quick rapport Ziva had built with those little girls. Those little girls who knew too much about the evil of the world already. She was always good with kids.

"Adult education," she clarified. "I would like to help people who have gotten lost find their way again. I was also looking at translation. Whatever, I end up doing, I would like to help people."

Help people put themselves back together again, just like she had. Help build new lives.

"I am not just thinking about my career now," Ziva said, hand reaching for the hem of her shirt, she pulled at brightly coloured material.

Two cups. Job and family. DiNozzo's mid-life crazy, was turning into a saga.

"Really?" he asked. "This about you and DiNozzo."

 _Don't be like me_ , Gibbs had told him, a couple of Christmases ago, holding Amira's new bike over his shoulder. For god's sake DiNozzo, don't be like me.

"Maybe," she said with a half-laugh, looking up at him. "Do you remember when you asked me if wanted kids? I did not have answer for you."

That surrogacy case. The kidnapped newborn. The newly decorated nursery. DiNozzo's heart broken, by an arms dealer's daughter.

"You gotta a answer now?' he asked.

She'd always had the answer. She'd just been scared to admit it. To afraid that her dreams would be another thing that would be taken away

"Yes," she said with a smile. "It may be hard, but Tony and I would like to have children very much."

Officially together just shy two months, and already planning a picket fence life. Didn't sound like his Agents one bit. He supposed he wouldn't be bumping into DiNozzo on their weekends off 'catching up' on paperwork anymore. Maybe, the lovebirds would invite him to their wedding.

"But first I would like to buy a house," Ziva declared. "One of those old houses, with big bookshelves for Tony's DVDs, and a huge kitchen. Maybe a garden too. I grew up in an apartment, I always wanted a garden."

He could see it now. The David-DiNozzo dream house, with an old Victorian with a wrap around porch. A kid or two. The two of them so desperate to provide the childhood neither of them had. Little league games. Noisy messy breakfasts. Games to scare the bedtime monsters away.

"Sounds like you've got it all figured out," he whispered. She sounded so damn excited about it too.

Outside the weather broke. The tiny pitter patter of summer rain. The coolness that came with that. Both of them looked toward the wall, smiling.

"Maybe," she said with a shrug. "But, there are some things I need to work out first. I made an appointment with a friend of Ducky's. A therapist."

He gulped. None of them were very good at managing the trauma that came with the job. It was probably his influence. But they weren't him, bourbon and boat building wasn't going to heal. Don't be like me, he'd begged of them. Yet, they were.

"Last time," Ziva said with a heavy sigh. The sands of Somalia slipped into the basement. "I rushed healing. I was not ready to confront some things. I need to go back. Heal properly. Build strong foundations. I know it will be hard."

He squeezed her tight. Her curls fell onto his shoulder.

 _I'm here for you kid. You're so brave. You're gonna be okay. I've got you._

"I'm proud," he coughed out.

 _Abba, do you like it? Abba, look what I did. Abba, Abba._

"Proud of what?" she asked.

"You," he said.

For knowing when she'd spent too long in the water. For knowing when the pull herself out, before the riptide came and pulled her under. For being better than him.

"For going to therapy?" she asked.

A part of her still wondered if she would actually go. Maybe, she would spend the hour session held up in her car, cursing her own failings. Eli always considered therapy weakness.

Maybe, she was weak.

America had made her soft, like Tali's baby skin.

America, had let her start fresh.

Like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. Ari hated butterflies. Maybe, he would hate her now too.

But, that didn't matter. People loved her. People loved her despite everything.

"For all of it," he told her. "I'm proud of you kid."

All she'd ever wanted was for her father to be proud of her.

And, he was.

So damn proud.

 **A/N** :

I don't own, anything.

Thanks for all the love. Seriously. So much love. It warms my heart.

One more epilogue type chapter coming up.


	16. Chapter 16

Her condo was warm. Almost too warm. She would dread her next power bill. Dinner plates, all but licked clean sat on her coffee table. She had made an eggplant stew, similar to what her mother used to make, but slightly less spicy, for Tony's benefit. He had joked that their entire relationship was just a ploy to get him to like eggplant. Something she did not deny.

Her legs were draped over Tony's lap while they watched a movie. Throughout the movie, his fingers would absently trace circles on her thighs. It felt nice. Peaceful. Safe.

The movie was in black and white. She was sure it was based on a book, maybe Patricia Highsmith, but she wasn't sure. Tony was engrossed in it, despite having seen it a few times. Every so often, he would lean into her ear, and tell it would all make sense in the end.

She smiled, as they sat there. Quiet and content. Outside, the rain started, and she wondered if it might snow. Thanksgiving was in a couple of days, and from what she had caught of the weather report, it just might. It would be her ninth winter in D.C, and was warming up to the idea of four months of snow.

She leaned close to Tony, and ran her fingers through his hair. She nuzzled her nose into the nape of his neck.

"You okay?" he asked, not looking up from the movie.

"Yes," she said, smile still not fading.

And she was. It had been months since she gave up the badge for good, and now it was starting to feel like she had landed on her feet. Like a cat who fell from the hundredth storey of an apartment building.

She had started some online classes for university, and was doing well. Tony was trying to convince her to take a film studies class as an elective, because it was something they could do together. He promised her that with him as a study partner, she would get an A.

She had found a job at a local NGO, she translated the mundane stuff for women who were still learning English. Three mornings a week, she explained tax forms, and pharmacy instructions. It was so different from her old life, but a satisfaction came from helping others help rebuild their lives. How genuinely these women would thank her. But she did not need their thanks, she was already so proud of what she did.

"I love you," she murmured into his ear, before placing a kiss on his cheek. His arm snaked around her waist, and pulled her even closer. Their skin pressed against one another.

"I love you too," he told her. Turning around and looking her in the eye. They wore matching smiles for a moment.

All was well. All was right.

He had been so good to her. She knew what a change it was for him, to go from having her by his side everyday, while they saved the world, to this peaceful little life she was trying to carve out. He had been so helpful, and so patient. He had found her an adult ballet class, from a flyer in a coffee shop near the Navy Yard. She had been so nervous, as she walked through those doors, expecting to find professional ballerinas whose eager eyes would notice how uncoordinated she had gotten. Instead, it was a more casual affair, and she found herself looking forward to Tuesday evenings. She found herself reveling in the burning of her muscles they next day. How quickly the old steps came back to her. How she felt like a child again.

"This was one of my mothers favourites," he declared as there was montage of the main couple falling in love. "When we used to take the train into the city, we used to pass the time by going through our top ten movies. She always ranked this one fairly high. She told me, that I'd get it when I was older."

She ran her hand through his hair again. They were both getting better at this. Letting the ghosts come out from the shadows. Talking about those that were not here, but still so missed. As the summer had started to fade, he had cashed in a couple of days of comp time, and taken her for a four day weekend. They'd driven up to Long Island, and he had shown her pieces of his past, where his old house used to be, the first Catholic school he had gotten kicked out of, and his mother's grave.

"I think she would have liked you," he murmured. "Once she got over the fact that you rank Pirates of the Caribbean in your top ten."

She laughed. A huge belly laugh. He laughed too. The rain pelted down.

"My mother would have liked your appetite," she declared, as the laughter faded. "And I think she would have seen that you a good man."

"Well I try," he deflected.

"Tali would have liked you too," she whispered. "You two would have been fast friends."

He smiled at her. They had gone to the opera the Saturday before, with Thanksgiving being late this year. He had held her hand, while they watched a production of Carmen. He had wrapped her in his jacket, as they walked to the car. She had told him stories, during the long car ride back to her place. The time Tali played one of the street children in Carmen. The audition for Micaela that Tali was so excited for. The audition she had never gone to. Ziva trying to improve Tali's french.

"Whatcha thinking about?" he asked, lazily as the credits started to roll on the film. "I can hear your thoughts buzzing away in there. Like bees."

Sometimes her thoughts did sting.

"It is nothing," she lied. Voice soft. For a moment his eyes flitted with concern, but then he noticed her smile. She was okay. They were both okay.

"So, you're not thinking about your super hot boyfriend," he muttered, wearing his bedroom eyes. "And how you have me all to yourself tonight."

He had been gone for five days, because of a case. A missing child. She knew just how hard Gibbs worked them, when it came to kid cases. Thankfully, it proved to be a custody dispute, and the child had been unharmed. She knew of course, that would not have stopped Gibbs' giving the warring parents a piece of his mind.

"Well that too," she said with a giggle, "But I was thinking, that I am happy."

She had said as much to her therapist during her most recent appointment, listing things to look forward too, and talking about the future. _That's progress_ the therapist had beamed, as she scratched something on her little notebook.

Maybe, she would finally put the past to bed. Maybe, she could have a nice future. Maybe, she could find peace.

"Like in this moment?" he asked. "Right now?"

Curled up on the sofa. Belly full. Loving, and being loved in return. It was just so nice. So peaceful.

"Yes," she whispered, "But also overall."

She felt safe and secure in her relationship. She still had her friends from her old life, despite the fears that they would no longer want her, now that she had let go of the badge. She regularly had coffee dates with McGee, and he had helped her with her math coursework. Her and Abby had regular girls-nights. She and Ducky had regular tea dates, always away from the Navy Yard. She was still apprehensive to face those pumpkin walls again.

She had even found a way to use her old fighting skills for good. Once a week she taught self-defense at a women's centre. She relished in watching women who were so afraid, find confidence and peace in themselves. She watched as slowly but surely, a sense of safety returned to those women who knew the horrors of the world too explicitly.

"Good," he whispered. "Good."

And she still had so much more to look forward to. Schmeil was going to visit for Thanksgiving, because this year Thanksgiving and the first night of Hanukkah overlapped, and Schmeil was excited for the combined celebration. The two holidays would not overlap again in both of their lifetimes. Senior would also be coming down from New York, and she was looking forward to seeing him.

She was also trying to plan a trip to Italy with Tony, for his next birthday. He had wanted to trace the DiNozzo family history. Schmeil was helping her do a bit of research, calling in some favours from a few colleagues in Europe. She hoped to have some starting points, for them to trace the DiNozzo family legend. She was hoping that she could keep it a surprise, for as long as possible. She could already picture Tony's face lighting up as she handed him the tickets.

"Are you happy, Tony?" she asked. Voice soft. A tiny bit afraid, that he would say no.

That question had been asked before. Piercing his heart as it did. He'd always skirted around them, quoting movies, or avoiding the question. This time the answer fell from his mouth before had a chance to catch it.

"Yeah," he said, voice strong not wavering. "Yeah, I am."

And he was. So damn happy. Happy to come home to her. Filled with excitement for the future. Ghosts of girlfriends past, probably snickered at the thought of him wanting the picket fence dream.

"Good," she said, as she stood up from the couch, and took his hand, in hers. They both wore their bedroom eyes. He placed a deep kiss on her lips as they stood in front of each other. "Good."

They scampered to her bedroom, giggling. Hand in hand. Matching smiles on their faces.

 **A/N** :

I don't own a thing, but man if I did Ziva David would have gotten her happy ending.

That's a wrap folks.

The muse is toying with some other ideas, but don't hold your breath. The muse is a fickle beast. But there is just so much more story to tell, with these two.

Thank you all so much, for all the love, all the reviews, and all the favourites. Thanks for putting up with the erratic updates, and typos. Thank you dear reader. Thank you so much. Again, thank you so very much.

According to Wikipedia and buzz-feed (two highly reputable sources, I know!) Thanksgiving and Hanukkah did sort of overlap in 2013, the first night of Hanukkah overlapped with the Thursday evening of US Thanksgiving. I'm neither American, nor Jewish, so don't quote me on that.

Carmen is a French opera, but set in Spain around 1830. It follows a doomed love affair, and looks at jealousy, and all consuming love. Did I blow a month of overtime money on tickets to see a local production? Yes. Was I the youngest person in theatre by half a century? Yes. Was it worth it? Yes.

Again, thank you so much for reading. It really warms my heart.


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